


What Remains

by rushedwords



Series: Project Enterprise [2]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Identity Issues, Non-Linear Narrative, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-29 20:42:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3909976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rushedwords/pseuds/rushedwords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before the Narada, the technology to imprint people had been confined to certain rules and regulations, but that day the flood gates opened. At the center of that storm was Leonard McCoy who only ever wanted to help people. He had been a good doctor and a good man until he became a pawn and catalyst for the downfall of humanity. However, there is still one last chance to bring them all back if he can get over his issues Jim and the rest of the crew, and reset the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Out of the Attic

He still couldn’t keep his hands steady.   
  
Wrapped around the holster of a gun, sure that the man at the other end deserved to die, his hands trembled. And it didn’t have a damn thing to do with nerves. That was just another thing  _this place_  had taken from him.   
  
He backed the man back against the wall, bringing the gun to point blank at his forehead. At least this way he knew he wouldn’t miss.   
  
“Looks like you had a security breach.” His voice was scratchy, deeper than he remembered it, although it was difficult to remember much of anything. And even more impossible to know what was real - that was what this place did.   
  
Hell, it was tempting to believe he was still in the attic because this wasn’t his life. Or rather this shouldn’t be his life.   
  
There was a time when pointing a pistol at someone was against everything he stood for. He was a doctor, not a killer. Except Leonard McCoy hadn’t performed surgery on anyone in a long time and those initials at the end of his name were little more than decoration.   
  
Swallowing hard, he released the safety. He didn’t blink, didn’t look away. No, if he was going to pull this trigger he was going to watch the life seep from the bastard against the wall.   
  
There wasn’t a thing that would stop him.  
  
“I sent for you.”  
  
Except maybe for that.   
  
“Heartless, conniving son of a bitch.” There might have been other words to describe Christopher Pike, but at the moment those words seemed the most fitting. “You must have gone crazy along with the world if you damn well think that after everything we’ve been through that I’m going to help you. I mean, the attic, what you did to my body…” His words dissolved into a frantic, hollow laughter. “Although I’m glad you’re doing well,  _Admiral_.”  
  
McCoy backed away. He lowered the gun that they both knew wasn’t going to be used. Not today at least.  
  
“You became too much of a liability. What did you think would happen?” He crossed the room to the wet bar, picking up the decanter of whiskey.   
  
“What I damn well knew would happen. Everywhere.”   
  
Pike paused, carefully looking at McCoy for the first time. He weighed his next words very carefully. “You’ve been briefed?”   
  
“I saw Chekov’s face,” McCoy spat the words. “God damn children…but then to be sure I went and took a walk outside.”   
  
“That probably wasn’t the best idea.” Those were words that could only be chased with a finger of whiskey. Anything to prepare him for what came next.   
  
“Ran into a group of cadets – I swear Starfleet designs those uniforms to be uncomfortable on purpose, probably to build character or some shit – they were just sitting in the fountain and asked me if I wanted to play pretty, pretty princess with them. Three grown men, playing patty cake without a care in the world.”   
  
It sounded nice, actually, to not give a fuck. Except that McCoy had always been cursed with the ability to care too much.   
  
“And I’m thinking are they prints or did they see what was coming and decide that insanity was the better option than watching the world burn?” The bite in his words hid how much stepping outside had shaken him. “So, tell me,  _Admiral_  Pike, how’s it feel to know you brought about the end of the world?”  
  
Pike offered McCoy a glass of whiskey. “Why don’t you tell me?”   
  
“I was never in the business of giving people what they want, or hell, what they  _need_ …always thought you were just children playing with matches.” McCoy knocked the glass from Pike’s hand, letting it shatter between them. “I was only ever trying to help people.”   
  
The two men stood staring at each other. Pike looked nothing like the man who was the mastermind behind the Enterprise project. His hair was greyer, his posture a little less confident. For a moment, McCoy wondered if he had it better, locked in the attic for over four years.  
  
He shuddered at the thought. No, there was nothing better about the attic.   
  
“We were all trying to help people.”  
  
McCoy shook his head. “Yeah, well, we did a bang up job of that.” Stepping over the broken glass, he went to the bar to get himself a drink.   
  
“There may be a way to stop it.”  
  
He paused turning around to look at Pike. No matter how much he wanted to, McCoy couldn’t just believe him. The technology was out there. There was no way to take it back. Still, he had to ask. “Chekov has a cure?”   
  
“Jim does.”  
  
His stomach dropped. That was the last name he wanted to hear. The only thing to do was pick up the whiskey decanter and take a nice long swig.   
  


###

  
_November 2258_  
  
Enterprise had been out in the black for six months. The actives were performing admirably. Everyone was pleased with the successes. Well, everyone except Leonard McCoy.   
  
The truth was the whole situation bothered him. A lot.   
  
Most days he could ignore or try to forget about the fact that half of the people in charge of this tin can weren’t actual people. McCoy knew his history, knew what happened when men tried to make people better and he didn’t believe for a second that any of the actives had volunteered for this service. He certainly wasn’t a volunteer.  
  
He had walked right into Christopher Pike’s trap – sign on or die. He could still hear that air of superiority and bullshit speech Pike gave him just over six months ago.   
  
“We’re not looking for a surgeon. What we need is someone to look after Romeo. We’ll be embarking on a long term mission and he’ll need someone – someone who cares for him greatly – to watch and help him every step along the way if this is to succeed.”  
  
“So you need a babysitter?”  
  
“Do you have any better offers lined up?”  
  
Now, they had him. McCoy was trapped between certain death and the unknown like someone took the damn planet from him, leaving him with nothing. Even if he did walk out of here, there would be no ground for him to run to. Starfleet was thorough.   
  
“It gives you what you want – full access to Romeo and the chance to get us should we slip up.”  
  
To say that McCoy had been obsessed with Jim Kirk would be polite. For a man who tried to kill him almost every time they met, Jim consumed him until he couldn’t think of anything else.   
  
“If I said yes, how would this work?”  
  
Pike smiled. “Simple. Romeo will be what the Federation needs and you will be whatever he needs.”  
  
Whatever he needs. The thought still made him sick. It was better managed when he could hide away in his research labs and not have to look at anyone.   
  
Except that sometimes what Jim needed was his presence at the senior officer meetings. Then he was forced to sit through all sorts of boring meetings, trying not to show his obvious discomfort with the actives sitting around them.   
  
Of all of them, Spock bothered him the most. And he was second in command.   
  
It was better just to focus on the captain, which wasn’t difficult. Between trying to figure out the construct and the neurological mystery that was Jim Kirk, the actual Jim Kirk, there was plenty to do.   
  
Unnatural as it all was, Jim in action was something to behold. Even if that was just something Chekov dreamed up, there was beauty there. That bothered him the most.   
  
“Alright, I think that’s all for today. Just be sure to review your briefing before the mission, but you’re dismissed.”   
  
The officers all rose and shuffled out, McCoy was just about to follow when Jim asked him to hang back a minute.   
  
“I’m busy, Jim.”   
  
“Yeah, I get it, you’re a doctor, not my therapist. And you have at least two trials that require your attention, I’ve heard it all before.”  
  
“That doesn’t mean it’s not true.”  
  
“We haven’t hung out like we used to in ages.” Jim slapped McCoy on the shoulder and he tried not to flinch. “Come by my quarters after your shift and we’ll catch up.”  
  
McCoy rolled his eyes. There was no ‘used to’ for them, not really.   
  
“Don’t have me make it an order.”  
  
“Fine,” he grumbled, sure he wasn’t going to win this one, “after my shift.”  
  
Jim just grinned really wide. And that only meant trouble, specifically for him.   
  
It also meant that for the rest of his shift he was going to be completely useless. Jim was up to something. It was unnerving enough with a normal person, but with a fake person – an active – with Romeo, well, it was a recipe for disaster.   
  
He had other things he should have been doing. Instead he spent his time looking over Romeo’s latest medical updates – hoping that he could find something there that would give away the game.   
  
Not that there was anything out of the ordinary to be found. The biggest mystery was that Romeo was evolving but there was no reason as to why.   
  
This left him to watch, to learn, and to be whatever Romeo needed.   
  
And the longer he was out here, McCoy started to think that maybe what he needed was Romeo. He liked being a sounding board and voice of reason for Jim. It was the sort of thing that was easy to get lost in.   
  
“Bones? Hey, Earth to Bones.”  
  
It was the name more than anything that jarred McCoy from his head. That wasn’t something that Chekov had written into the imprint. It annoyed the hell out of him, and yet it felt right.  
  
“Bones, where are you right now?”  
  
McCoy was surprised to realize how close Jim was to him.  
  
Too many things ‘felt right’ with Romeo and even more with Jim Kirk. It was taking everything he had to not give into those urges that were probably just Pike and Chekov giving him something back. Not that he needed it. Out in the black he didn’t really have much of a choice but to comply.  
  
“Just thinking.”  
  
“You work too hard, Bones.” Jim was watching him carefully, eyes peering right into him.  
  
McCoy snorted at that. “Says the man who doesn’t sleep more than four hours a night.”  
  
“I’m the captain,” he said laughing, “what’s your excuse?”  
  
All McCoy could do was shake his head. There was a lot going on that kept him awake at night. Once the actives went to bed for the night, the actuals had work of their own to attend to – diagnostics, reports, program update meetings. And that was without all of the extra work that McCoy was putting in for his own purposes.   
  
Jim reached over and ran his hand through McCoy’s hair. “I worry about you. I mean I know this assignment wasn’t your first choice.” That was putting it lightly. “But I don’t think I could be doing this without you.”  
  
McCoy closed his eyes, giving into that simple touch. It had been too long since he had been touched like that – or really at all. While he literally could not have seen it coming, he’d have to be a complete fool to be surprised.   
  
Before he had any space left to think or over-think, Jim’s lips were on his. The kiss quickly became about giving in and just taking. It was everything he wanted and never thought he was allowed to have.   
  
Or maybe it was needed.   
  
Fuck.  
  
What the fuck was he doing? What the fuck did he do now?  
  
“Shouldn’t have done that,” he said in an exhale. He was still too close to Jim’s with their heartbeats pounding in sync “Jim, I – we can’t do this.”  
  
Even as he said those words, all he could smell, all he could taste was Jim Kirk. He didn’t have an honest chance.   
  
“Why?” Jim asked, not moving away. “What are you afraid of?”  
  
McCoy swallowed, wishing he were a better man.   
  
“It’s not right.” Perhaps he should have wished for more conviction in his voice then.  
  
“It feels right to me.” Jim’s hands were still on him, soothing and discomforting at the same time. “And it seems like you agree or else you’d be long gone, so what is it? What aren’t you telling me, Bones?”  
  
He hated the way Jim was looking at him now, like he knew him, like he had always known him. Up until eight months ago Romeo, Jim Kirk – whoever the hell they wanted him to be today, didn’t have a damn clue that Leonard McCoy existed.  
  
“Look, Jim, I can’t, alright?” It wasn’t quite conviction, but annoyance suited along with the strength to push away from Jim and off the couch. The only thing he hated more than the way Jim was looking at him were all the thoughts going on in his head, everything telling him that there was nothing wrong with it. “Even if I want to, it’s not right because you’re not-“  
  
“Real?”   
  
McCoy paused, whipping his head around to look at Jim. He probably looked like a Klingon in the face of a tribble.   
  
“That’s what you were going say, wasn’t it?” Although it was phrased like a question, McCoy wasn’t sure it actually was and that worried him a little bit more. “That I’m not real, that I’m just some thing that Chekov constructed.”  
  
There was protocol for this. Things he should be doing because this wasn’t just a glitch, this bordered on composite event. McCoy had never witness one personally, but he knew they weren’t good. An active accessed all of his imprints at once causing a psychotic break and leading to a number of dead bodies. He should have felt scared.  
  
“Jim…”   
  
“And how I’m not supposed to know that because I’m supposed to think that I’m the same person I was born as, but I’m not.” Jim – fuck, was he Jim anymore? – stood up and walked across to McCoy his hands out showing that he proved no threat. “I remember them – all of the people I’ve been. They’re right here, I can slip one on and I become it or it becomes me, but none of them are the real Jim Kirk.”   
  
McCoy didn’t know how to process what Jim was saying. By all accounts this moment shouldn’t be happening, but here they were. And he knew better than to doubt what Jim Kirk was capable of.   
  
“Except even in all of that, there’s you, threaded through all of them…you’re the one thing that feels real, near and distant all at once like Jim Kirk, the real Jim, knew you.”  
  
McCoy stepped away from Jim again, shaking his head. “That’s the handler-active protocol, you’re supposed to feel that way about me.”  
  
“Bullshit.” He didn’t even hesitate. “This is more than that, because even if that was true you wouldn’t love me too.”  
  
If he were a sensible man, he might have called Sulu and had this issue taken care of before it could grow. He should have shown tact, played dumb and denied, denied, denied everything that Jim put out there.   
  
However, McCoy wasn’t sure he was a sensible man. Their twisted version of Sleeping Beauty had appeal. He did feel it too. “I…” McCoy started and then stopped again.   
  
Jim smirked.   
  
Trouble. He knew it from that look earlier. McCoy just didn’t know how much trouble it was going to be.   
  
Unlike their first time, McCoy saw it coming this time, but even then he wasn’t ready. Kissing Jim once was enough, but doing it a second time was unbelievable. The initial awkwardness was still there, but with an unspoken familiarity. Maybe they had done this before. And how he wanted to do it again and again and again.  
  
This time Jim pulled away, looking back at him with a new confidence at the far too open expression all over McCoy’s face. The want was a full-blown need and even if he knew it was wrong, McCoy didn’t care.  
  
“And I’m going to help you figure out what this operation is really all about, and then we’re going to take it down together.”  
  
It really did feel like they had been here before. (God, his stomach churned at that implication.) If that was true, he hoped they wouldn’t be here again.  
  


###

_Present_  
This whole thing was because of him. He had made a deal with the devil. If he was being honest, he had made too many deals with different devils. And they all led him to this point. It was impossible for the universe to give Leonard McCoy a happy ending.   
  
McCoy slouched on the couch turned away from the big bay windows. Looking at the outside world was just too much now. Seeing Chekov’s face was one thing, hearing the full briefing right from the man in charge just made it worse. And McCoy hadn’t thought that was possible.  
  
The decanter was almost empty now, but the edge was still there. There was something that Pike wasn’t telling him.  
  
“We’ll have to save catching up further for another time.” On cue his communicator beeped. Pike didn’t have to flip it open to know what the message was – perimeter breach. “Right now, you’ll find that your best course of action is to run.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Run, commander, run as fast as you can or what happens next will make the attic feel like a pleasant day dream.”   
  
“Wait, you’re just letting me go?” He couldn’t have heard that right. After everything he did there was no way he just got to walk out of here a free man, even if this was the end of the world.  
  
Pike stood up from behind his desk and crossed the office to his arms locker. “You are a dangerous man, McCoy. One the Federation wishes to keep close and given the course they set out on, it is my belief that said danger would be better directed back toward your captors rather than working for them.”  
  
McCoy recognized it for what it was – a move. This was the man who condemned him to purgatory in the attic. There was no way he was risking his life and his livelihood for Leonard McCoy. With more time, McCoy might have been able to figure it out. Except down in the courtyard a team of men was establishing a perimeter around the building. The ATL had sent MACOs.  
  
“As you can imagine, my superiors do not share these sentiments.”  
  
It was unreal.   
  
“Are you out of your mind?”  
  
Pike pulled a hypospray from the cabinet and handed it to McCoy.   
  
“Or perhaps I am the last sane voice left.”   
  
One glance at the hypo, he knew what it was. The Darnell Blocker. He took it from Pike’s hand and jabbed it hard into his thigh. If this was how he died at least he went out as his own person.  
  
“Where do I go?”  
  
Pike exchanged the empty hypo for McCoy’s phase pistol. “Just go. Find Jim. Help him.”  
  
“What makes you think he ever wants to see me again?”  
  
Pike keyed his code into the console at his desk and an invisible door slid open behind his desk. “Do not make me repeat myself again.”  
  
“I hope you know what you’re doing.” McCoy shook his head and started toward the back exit.   
  
Then Pike did the last thing McCoy would have expected in this moment. He laughed. “Only as much as you do.”  
  
There was no time for a snide remark. All he could do was run.  
  
The door slid closed behind him. He was no more than 100 yards away when he heard a gun shot from behind. God, he hoped that wasn’t what he thought it was, although maybe that was for the better.  
  
Run.  
  
That was his only option. And it made him the biggest coward he could imagine, because he never wanted to stop running. Leonard McCoy just wanted to disappear into nothingness, slip away from this life and try to find out what normal meant because that was the dream.   
  
Only there was no more normal.  
  
The blocker coursing through his system, if it was his original design, was only temporary. It would only get him so far. And if Pike were worth anything, there would be some sort of a tracer spliced into the drug mix. It was one thing to let him go free, it was just plain moronic to not have a way to bring him back. So, McCoy would have to deal with that too.  
  
McCoy made a sharp turn through the tunnels. He kicked open a giant metal screen that led to the transport bay. In the bay was a wide range of transportation options – hover bikes, old style cars, and even a few short-range shuttles. He hated just about every one of them, but his feet could only take him so far. McCoy was just about to pick the lesser of the evils when he spotted a familiar face.   
  
“Sulu! Thank god, I was thinking I was going to have to drive one of these myself.”  
  
McCoy wouldn’t go so far as to call Sulu an ally, but he never thought he was an enemy. It made sense if Pike was trying to get him out of here that Sulu would be sent to help. It was a relief, until he saw the smirk on his face as the security chief turned around.  
  
“Doctor McCoy, what a pleasure seeing you here.”   
  
Sulu drew his weapon, making something of a show to set it to stun.   
  
“What the hell, you little shit!” McCoy knew he shouldn’t have trusted Pike. Always a card to play and one that usually screwed him over in the process. “Pike, let me go!”  
  
“That was not a decision that Pike was authorized to make.” Crossing over toward McCoy he shot him square in the chest. “I’m securing my place in the new world order and if you’re smart, you’ll do the same.”   
  
Even if McCoy wanted to fight, there wasn’t a damn thing he could do. He just fell to the ground, a loaded but otherwise empty stream of profanity leaving his mouth as he went down.  
  
Once he was sure that McCoy wasn’t going anywhere, Sulu pulled out his communicator.   
  
“I have McCoy secured in the transport bay.”  
  
“Why Mr. Sulu, there is finally something worth while in this house after all.” On the other end of the line was a rich southern voice – it made McCoy think of a home that was barely even a distant memory. “I’m sending a team down to collect McCoy. Once he has been transferred I’m afraid you’ll need to come up to your new office and deal with the mess we’ve made. My apologies, of course.”  
  
“Sir?”  
  
“The correct response would be, ‘thank you for the promotion.’”  
  
“Yes, sir, thank you, sir. You will not be disappointed.”  
  
“No, I don’t believe I will be.”  
  
The last thing McCoy heard was  _that_  voice with just an air of amusement. It felt like something out of a dream or maybe even from a life he tried not to remember.   
  
The recovery team was prompt. Not that Sulu would expect anything else. They were ATL dispatched men and women, which meant they were programmed to be the best of the best.   
  
Now he just had a matter of a mission to gain control over.   
  
As he walked back through the barracks up to the officer’s suites, Sulu ignored the glances he received. They were of no concern to him. Hikaru Sulu was going to run a tight ship. Even better he was going to make Christopher Pike watch; well, assuming he wasn’t dead already.   
  
Exiting the lift, he looked around Pike’s office – or rather his office now. He was going to have to do something about the decor. It was just so plain. “Admiral Pike, are you here?” Surveying the room, he didn’t immediately see the older man. Not that this came as a surprise. He could be wiry.   
  
Matthews had the order to shoot him and Matthews didn’t miss. It was really just a matter of following the blood trail around the side of the imperial desk. “Oh Admiral Pike, how the mighty have fallen. You could have been the most powerful man in the world.” Pike tried to crawl away, grasping for each uneasy breath he sucked into his lungs. “You had McCoy, Romeo, India, and unlimited funds and now you’re bleeding on my rug.”  
  
“Go to hell,” he spat.  
  
Shaking his head, Sulu pulled out Pike’s chair and sat down. “Here I was going to be nice and call Dr. Chapel right away, but maybe I’ll wait a few minutes, that is if you think you have the time to spare.” Loud and clear he was heard. This was his house now. He called the shots.  
  
Sulu didn’t know it then, but things were going to get worse. A lot worse.  
  
If he had known that, maybe he wouldn’t have taken the throne, but right now what he saw was opportunity that Pike was letting go to waste.  
  


###

  
The fucking irony was that getting out of the attic was the easy part. Before him, no one made it out alive. If they needed something from you, they just took it.   
  
No other person who entered into the attic lasted more than a year. Leonard McCoy had spent just over four years in the hellhole.   
  
Not that time meant anything for him. It was an eternity of playing out worst-case scenarios, living in a constant state of fear, searching for something real just to have it taken away from him, or worse – turned into a weapon.  
  
That was the biggest joke of all.  
  
He didn’t need to be turned into a weapon. Leonard McCoy already was a weapon. They just needed to aim him in the right direction and then whole civilizations could collapse just because someone answered a communicator.  
  
Even with Pike’s interference, the end result could only be put off for so long. The ATL wanted him and they would stop at nothing until they had him back east in their labs.   
  
While McCoy might have had a hand in shaping the world, it was no longer his. He had no control over anything. Hell, he didn’t even know where he was. The only thing he did know was that he wasn’t in the attic.   
  
He wasn’t allowed to dream in the attic, but he definitely had been dreaming of Georgia, in the years before Starfleet, well, before his dad got sick and he started down a dangerous path. They weren’t always happy or perfect dreams, but they were preferable to the waking world. At least in his dreams he knew that nothing was real. When he woke up he couldn’t be sure if what he knew was because he knew it or because someone put it in his head.   
  
Today when he woke up, he wasn’t alone. Sitting across from him was a girl with dirty blonde hair and tired hazel eyes, staring at him like she was looking at a ghost.   
  
“You better not try anything funny.”  
  
He should have just shot himself. The second he got out of the attic, one shot clean to the head and this wouldn’t even have been a possibility. It could have been over.   
  
Now, they were playing games with him.   
  
“You’re Leonard McCoy.” It wasn’t a question. The young woman spoke like she might have known him, or at least thought she knew him.   
  
“That’s what they’ve taken to calling me,” he said, giving her that much. “Although I can’t be sure who the hell that’s really supposed to be or what version you might have today.”  
  
For as little as he gave, that seemed to be enough for her. She bolted up and ran right toward him, capturing him in a rather awkward hug. It hurt to be touched.  
  
McCoy pushed her back, using the act of surprise against her. “I know this is the end of the world and all, but strangers still don’t take kindly to just being hugged.”  
  
“Strangers?” She repeated, sounding infinitely smaller than she was. “We’re not strangers. Well, we are, but not as strange as you think. I’m your daughter, Joanna.”  
  
He paused. Did he have a daughter? Somewhere in his head were memories of a daughter. A little girl who was his entire world as everything else fell to pieces.   
  
The girl in the cell across from him could be her. Except McCoy wasn’t even sure that she was real. There were too many competing memories. So he settled on the safest one. “My daughter died.”  
  
The girl shook her head. “That was what they had you believe because they knew you wouldn’t agree to any of it unless you really did lose everything in the divorce. I – gods – I never stopped looking for you, Dad, but then Mom – ”  
  
“Yes, what about mommy dearest?” They both jumped at the man standing at the door, trying to hide his amusement. “Please don’t let me interrupt this little family reunion.”  
  
McCoy pushed to his feet, hoping to lunge for the overweight man. Not that he expected it would give him a winning hand, but maybe this wasn’t about winning anymore. The man easily shoved McCoy back toward the ground.  
  
“Now, now, there will be none of that. After all, I suppose this is my family too.” McCoy scrambled back against the wall. “What, you don’t recognize me? Well, I suppose I don’t really recognize myself either, but that’s the beauty of full body upgrades, although I’m not sure this one is exactly an upgrade, but it serves its purpose.”   
  
“What the hell do you want?”  
  
“I already have what I want.”   
  
“I don’t have a god damn thing to give to you.”  
  
“C’mon Len, stupid was never a good look on you.” He sounded just like his ex-wife. “I’ve seen the output reports from your time in the attic and I know there is a lot more you’re going to do for us.”  
  
“Quite the sales pitch.”  
  
“Oh I don’t need a sales pitch, just this fact – you work for us, or I’m going to kill the kid.”  
  
Joanna opened her mouth to protest, but McCoy beat her to it.   
  
“Go ahead and kill the kid, it’s not like thousands of people dead aren’t already dirtying my hands.”  
  
“Only this one would be different, this one you could have saved, and this one is actually yours. I mean I did give birth to her, and found her simply too useful to get rid of after the divorce.”   
  
McCoy didn’t trust it – couldn’t trust this man claiming to be Jocelyn. Even if he knew that full body upgrades were possible, he didn’t want to accept they existed.   
  
Loathe as he was to admit it, it did make sense that she would be at the helm of this operation now. And even if the girl wasn’t his, and despite all of the people he might have gotten killed in the past, he wasn’t sure if he could watch it happen right in front of him.  
  
The man signaled for the guards to come in. “Patience has never been my strong suit.”   
  
McCoy wished he were a stone. That he could be Pike and not be affected. And he almost managed it until Joanna started crying.  
  
The technology made it so no one had to die, but that didn’t mean that everyone got to live forever.   
  
“Fine. I’ll do it.” After all, what was one more deal? If he even had a soul anymore, it surely wasn’t a good one.   
  
He was a starving man who held a false hope that maybe if he complied things would be better for him. Or at the very least, he would get access to state of the art labs again. That way when he was working on what they wanted, he could be working on a way to undo what he did.   
  
What surprised him was how easily he fell back into the routine of laboratory work. It was like coming home because in that one tiny room, he could control almost all of the variables and things happened the way they should have. He was doing what he always did best – figure things out.   
  
And when he wasn’t preoccupied with lab work, he entertained the idea that it was only a matter of time before Jim made a move on the facility. There were pictures of him all over the ATL with a countdown since the last Kirk sighting. Apparently, he made it a game of raiding the facilities every so often, killing a few guards and stealing any supplies he could get his hands on.  
  
McCoy had been at the facility almost three months now and Jim Kirk was nothing more than a fairy tale he overheard in the corridors. To think, Jim Kirk – the man, the construct, the fucking rebel who had escaped and become some small beacon of hope. His message had been simple – nothing was gone, just lost. And he would take down every single person associated with the imprint technology until the world was right again.   
  
Although he did still sometimes wish that Jim would show up and blast him out of existence just to make it all stop. Joanna was barely even a comfort anymore. She was now just a carrot they waved in front of him, prompting him to go faster, to give them more. And even if he wasn’t actually in the attic, he might as well be because time no longer mattered. He only marked weeks by Darnell’s Monday afternoon check-ins.   
  
Then Darnell broke pattern, rushing into the lab with a manic look on his face. “The base is going into lockdown and I thought I would ride out the Jim Kirk shit storm with you. Less you two get any funny ideas.”  
  
McCoy chortled at the idea.   
  
Darnell clearly didn’t know how bad things with Jim had become. The only outcome McCoy saw was two dead bodies. The only remaining variable was whether his death would be painless or not.   
  


###

  
_January 2259_  
  
Giving into his need and being with Jim was strange, wrong, and so very right all at the same time. As he settled into it, he was able to learn more about the technology and elasticity of the brain than anyone had ever learned before. It was ground breaking research that he kept close.  
  
The things men with a vision could do with what he knew.   
  
And then there was Jim. Being with Jim was familiar – too familiar.  
  
And given his tenuous relationship with the universe, he couldn’t just trust that this was just what love felt like. He knew too much and he knew that men like him didn’t just stumble into the perfect mate without so much as trying.   
  
Besides, he needed a control anyway and he certainly wasn’t going to ask anyone else.   
  
It was all perfectly normal. It was normal until it wasn’t.  
  
How could he not have seen this before?  
  
“You never made a scan of yourself,” he said, answering his own question. He never wanted to before. Hell, the mere act of getting into that chair made his skin crawl, sending his heart rate through the roof like he was terrified of it.  
  
He was terrified of the chair and apparently with good reason. What he saw wasn’t a healthy, normal human brain. There was massive scarring throughout the cerebrum. And while some connections were trying to grow around and between the scarring, most of the neural activity in his head happened in the cerebellum.   
  
Someone else might not have been able to make sense of what he was seeing. But Leonard McCoy knew. He spent endless days staring at brains that looked like this. Well, not just like this – his was rather unique in that sense, but brains that had active architecture installed.   
  
“No.” He stumbled backward away from the monitor, as though distance could make what he was seeing unseen. The problem was you couldn’t unring a bell.  
  
“No. No. No.” That couldn’t be right.  
  
“I’m a person!” He shouted, grateful that his lab was secure and completely soundproof. “I’m a god damn person!”  
  
Wobbly hands picked up the closest thing not bolted down to a work surface and he threw it across the room. The lab he worked for months to build was destroyed in just a few minutes.   
  
“I’m real. I know I’m real.” With nothing left to destroy, he slammed his fist into the monitor. The glass shattered, cutting his knuckles open – the shaking still would not stop.   
  
He couldn’t trust them anymore. Couldn’t trust anyone. Not even Jim. Especially not Jim. There were too many variables there.   
  
Jim was familiar – like those damn trust protocols they installed for handlers.  
  
And Jim knew too much about what McCoy was doing, about all of things he wasn’t telling Chekov or Sulu or, fuck, even Pike.  
  
They were playing him. He was just some goddamn pawn, another one of their actives used to destroy the world. McCoy wouldn’t have it – couldn’t have it. He would not become a destroyer of men.   
  
“What do I do? What do I do?” He repeated it over and over to himself.   
  
Who could he trust? Who would help him take down Enterprise, to make sure that this technology was buried?   
  
He went over to the still functioning communicator and opened a line to the last person anyone would have expected him to call.   
  
“Clay?” He asked, trying to keep together, “I’m going to need your help.”  
  
“Len!” The man on the other end was nothing but cheer and bright smiles. “What can I do you for?”  
  
“I’ve made it inside Enterprise, it’s real, it’s all real and we need to make it stop…you’re…you’re the only person I can trust.”  
  
It would be a year before Jim found him out. But it was nine months too late. It had already begun.   
  


###

_Present_  
“Well, look what I found here,” said Jim as he walked into the laboratory. “Darnell, you’ve certainly seen better days, but thanks for saving me the work of having to hunt you down to do this.”  
  
He made the mistake the first time of not shooting to kill. He had some false sense of compassion then. Now, he knew better.   
  
“Do you ever think that if you didn’t cut The Company off at the head, the tech wouldn’t have gotten out of control?”  
  
Laughing, Jim pulled out his phase pistol and pointed it at Darnell. “Yeah, because you're a real model of control.” He switched the gun to kill.   
  
“I’m in twenty other bodies right now, do you think this is going to change anything?”  
  
Jim just smirked and shot him right through the head. “Ask me that again sometime.”   
  
The body fell to the ground. It would be a few hours until the other Darnells realized one was taken off line. It would probably be only a day or two, until a replacement was installed.   
  
There was a movement to his left side and Jim shifted, setting the gun right at the target.   
  
Leonard McCoy. The man he hadn’t seen in over four years, but still haunted his existence. It was almost unreal, seeing him again.   
  
Only there was no heartfelt reunion. The scene wouldn’t close with two lovers caught in a passionate embrace. Jim just aimed the gun right at McCoy’s head. “You going to tell me you’re in twenty other bodies too?”  
  
McCoy laughed. He hoped there weren’t any back ups of him running around. “You know where I’ve been, shit, go ahead and shoot me. That would be a blessing if it actually managed to stick.”  
  
“I also know exactly what sort of things that brain of yours has been doing the past four years.”   
  
“So what are you waiting for?”


	2. The Other Incident

Learning the truth about McCoy had nearly destroyed him. McCoy was that missing part of him that he had been looking for, but then to learn that the man who made it real also killed everyone. It was too much.   
  
Jim couldn’t believe it. He still didn’t want to believe it.   
  
His memories of McCoy weren’t so much fuzzy as they were milk that had stayed open on the counter just a little bit too long. They weren’t quite sour, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to drink them in.   
  
The guy was like Judas, Hitler, Khan, and every other bastard during World War III rolled into one. And he missed him. Of course he missed Bones. For a while that man had been near everything to him, he helped grow the Jim Kirk construct when no one else did.  
  
He loved him. Or at least was programmed to love him. He wasn’t sure. Most days it was easier to just pretend it was something that Chekov threw into his head. Otherwise he loved a man who flipped the switch to kill the world.   
  
Over the barrel of the gun, the two men stared at each other. Neither moving, barely even blinking.   
  
“Kill me! We both know I deserve it.”  
  
Jim closed his eyes and lowered the gun, unable to maintain eye contact. “I was programmed to trust you! Try as I might I can’t overwrite that damn code.” They didn’t have time for this. He wanted to punch something. “I hate you so much.”  
  
Outside the lab, warning claxons blared. Flashing red lights illuminated the hallways signaling the level one breach.   
  
If they still maintained their old protocols, a team of MACOs was no more than fifteen minutes away, and that would have been a slow response. In all reality they had about five minutes to escape.   
  
The laboratory door swung open and Jim turned, aiming the gun at the intruder. McCoy was forgotten, but he didn’t move, still stuck in that same spot hoping someone would show mercy and kill him.   
  
“Spock, what the hell are you doing here?”  
  
He didn’t answer the question. Spock simply pulled out his tricorder and plugged a few things into the machine. A minute later the sirens stopped and the floodlights came on. “I have bought us time, but it is imperative that we leave now.”   
  
Jim nodded and started back through the lab, ransacking the cabinets for supplies. “I take it you also want to grab the data streams too?”  
  
“Whatever we can gather will be beneficial. I will see what I can do to assist.” Spock went over to a monitor and with an unnatural grace he started typing away at the station. He moved like Chekov fiddling with his toys and it made McCoy uneasy.   
  
Perhaps a smarter man would have made a run for it. Funny how running was the last thing on his mind right now. Instead McCoy was gobsmacked watching the two of them. “Unnatural,” McCoy said under his breath, not drawing the obvious attention of either man. Not that they could even be called that.   
  
Jim came back over, a satchel loaded down with what McCoy could only imagine. He glared at McCoy but didn’t linger, instead turning his attention immediately back to Spock. “Alright, I got what I need, let’s go.”  
  
Spock nodded. “Yes, I believe I have everything, we should be going.” After double-checking the upload, he tucked the tricorder away.   
  
Jim started toward the door and stopped when he realized that Spock wasn’t following him. With an annoyed sigh, he glanced back over at McCoy. “If you’re going to kill him, you don’t have to hold off on my account.”  
  
McCoy just stood there, looking at Spock. Where Jim could not, he knew that Spock wouldn’t hesitate. Spock felt no ties to him. He was just another body.   
  
“Doctor, perhaps you do not understand our predicament.” Spock forcefully grabbed McCoy’s arm, tugging him across the lab toward the door. “I have gone through great lengths to get you here, if you delay us any longer my efforts will be futile.”  
  
Jim’s eyes went wide. “What the hell, Spock?” He grabbed for his gun again. “I don’t want him in our mix. He’s the enemy! He’s the one who let the tech loose! I wouldn’t trust him if my life depended on it!”  
  
Spock was visibly unmoved by Jim’s anger. “I believe we have all played our part in that. Even given the…tense feelings between you and the doctor, removing him from this complex will serve to further infuriate The Company, which I believe is one of your goals, perhaps even something you take pleasure in. Once we have utilized Doctor McCoy’s services, then you may do with him as you please.”  
  
“Hey guys, I’m right here.”   
  
Jim glared at McCoy, but ultimately ignored him. “You have a plan then?”   
  
“Yes, and I will explain it in detail once we are back at the base. For now, I simply ask that you trust me.”  
  
Both Jim and McCoy chortled at the comment. Trust was no easy concept to come by, even when it could be programmed.   
  
“Fine.” Jim sighed, rolling his shoulders out. “But he does one thing I don’t like and I’m going to blow his brains out.”  
  
All three of them knew that was a lie. Jim had become a composite of all the programming in his head, he didn’t get to overwrite any of it and that included the active-handler protocol.   
  
“That is acceptable, provided that you consult me before you take any action.”  
  
“Whatever.”  
  
Apparently, McCoy had no say in his own fate anymore. Maybe he never did. “We have to get Joanna,” he said once they were out in the hallway.  
  
Jim rolled his eyes. “If the brat has any sense to her, she is already waiting by the van because Spock here doesn’t like to wait around. See, the longer we take here the more likely I am to kill someone who doesn’t have it coming and Spock is big on the morality of it all, but me – well, I don’t really see the point.”   
  
For all the noise they caused breaking into the lab, it was surprisingly easy to get out. That probably had something to do with the number of bodies filling the corridors.   
  
No one was left. Those that mattered had left and the expandable MACOs would be in soon to clean up the rest. This was the world now.   
  
McCoy didn’t feel any relief when they made it back outside. It was just a prison designed in a slightly different way.   
  
At least back in the complex he understood the rules of the game a bit better. Do what they said or the girl dies. Now, it was play by the rules Spock and Jim wouldn’t tell him and hope they take pity on him.   
  
They both left him on edge – Spock more than Jim and for good reason. For as much as McCoy assigned blame to The Company, a good deal of his trouble started with the too calm, half-human who apparently had some great plan involving him.   
  
Jim might have been trouble, but Spock was simply dangerous. But losing his planet might do that to a man.  
  


###

  
_February 2258_    
  
Soon the world would know of the Narada Incident and everything would change. The Federation would never be the same again.  
  
History would speak of the atrocities of crazed man named Nero who destroyed one world and came far too close to destroying another. It would document the bravery of the nameless Starfleet officers who did their duty.   
  
And it would forget that in the same instant the world was saved, it was also damned. The real irony was that it had happened before. Only the storm coming now would make the Eugenics’ War and World War III look like child’s play. This would be an extinction event and just maybe the Vulcans were fortunate because it was quick for them.   
  
They were all charting unmarked waters now. There was no longer any familiar ground. And the stakes were higher than they have ever had been before. With all the chaos still unfolding aboard Enterprise, there would be no stand down order coming for the actives. Majority of the ship wasn’t even aware that the two men in charge weren’t actual people.   
  
There was no reason to question it. Even if they were rush jobs, the Jim Kirk and Spock imprints performed beautifully. Earth was saved, and although dead in the water, Enterprise was safe – the Federation stood defended.  
  
And the one person who might have made a fuss about it was a bit preoccupied trying to save their real commanding officer. The Romulans had done quite a number on Christopher Pike, but after twelve hours of surgery and what McCoy knew would be a lengthy recovery, he would walk again.  
  
Now, all McCoy wanted to do was knock back a few fingers of bourbon and grab a few much needed hours of sleep. The only thing standing in his way was the need for him to approve continued assignment for Romeo and India. “Chapel!” He called across the crowded bay – there seemed to be more injuries coming in now. “Do you have the reports I requested?”  
  
“Sir, I have them right now.”   
  
Despite the exhaustion and confusion around them, he couldn’t prevent his expression from softening at the sight of Christine Chapel walking toward him. The woman was brilliant at keeping the bay in order. Even just a few hours working under him, she could anticipate his every move. More importantly she had remained calm and focused through all of the disorder.   
  
Once this was all over, he was going to put in a formal request to have her transferred to special operations. They needed more people like her keeping the actives and the handlers – especially the handlers – in order.   
  
“Mr. Chekov went to great lengths to ensure that I hand this to you personally.”   
  
She handed him a secured PADD, with what McCoy could assume had at least two levels of encryption to dig through before he got to what he needed. The kid was a neurotic and a bit paranoid, but he was also a genius.   
  
“Thank you.” At least McCoy was used to his eccentricities by now. After two years working on The Project with Chekov, he hoped that he had figured the kid out. Not that Pavel Chekov was someone McCoy wanted to figure out, but in a lot of ways Chekov was too much like him. Too damn smart and sure that he could do whatever he thought up. It was the reason why they were brought onto The Project. Starfleet needed people whose genius was backed by enough arrogance to actually perform the impossible and tinker with the human mind. The motives for the actions were irrelevant as long as the outcome was what they wanted.  
  
McCoy should have gone into his office and put this last hurdle behind him, but Chapel was still standing there waiting. “Is there anything else?” he asked as he opened the secured files.  
  
“I have also been asked to give you an update of our status.”   
  
McCoy looked up, throwing an eyebrow at her as the nuero output files for Romeo and India loaded on his screen.   
  
“The turbulence we experienced earlier was the warp cores being detonated, leaving the ship propelled by only our impulse engines putting us at least three weeks away from Sol.”  
  
God, this was so much worse than he expected. The actives had neuro outputs well outside of the parameters of their imprints, stress levels through the roof and what he could only assume were a handful of injuries that they were programmed to ignore. And that wasn’t even taking into account that India was a god damn hob goblin and even if Chekov was sure the imprint would block the telepathic ripples of losing a planet, McCoy wasn’t as confident.   
  
Add all that to spending three weeks floating around in this tin can, unequipped for anything to go wrong. Which of course meant that everything would.  
  
“I’m going to need you to go up to the bridge and make sure that Spock and the Captain come down to Sickbay so I can be sure they aren’t going to pass out on us – that’s the last thing we need.”   
  
“Of course, doctor,” she said before turning to leave again. With no one bleeding out in front of him, McCoy went back to his office to pull up the scans on bigger displays so he could really get a sense of what he was dealing with.   
  
Up on the bridge, Jim sat in the captain’s chair doing a great job at pretending that nothing was different. Except something wasn’t just different, but it was wrong.   
  
Jim’s skin felt too small for his body now. There were just so many different voices – people maybe – screaming in his head and he could hear them all. And he wasn’t sure that he actually was Jim Kirk.  
  
Something had happened down on Delta Vega. The man who claimed to be Spock flipped some sort of switch in his head and made him realize that he wasn’t alone – that he wasn’t right.   
  
Luckily there was so much going on that no one had noticed he was different now. He had to be different because he certainly couldn’t be the same. There had been plenty of stuff to worry about. Except that was behind them now. The ship was stable and there was three weeks of open space ahead of them.   
  
Eventually he would seek out Bones and try to figure out what was happening, but he needed more information first.   
  
More importantly, the actual Spock looked about ready to explode. Spock was rigid in the chair. He wasn’t even blinking at the monitor in front of him. The only motion about him was the slow press of dull fingernails into the palms of his hands.   
  
Uhura kept stealing glances toward his station. And at least once Jim could have sworn he saw Sulu look over too. If he didn’t have other things to worry about, he might believe that they were planning something. Instead he was just grateful that it took attention away from him. Now, he just had to sit pretty in the chair and worry about what to do next.   
  
A minute later the doors to the bridge opened to reveal Christine Chapel. And the whole lot of them looked toward her, seemingly out of place among the ragged and tired people on the bridge. Not that she wasn’t just as exhausted, she just wore it better than most.   
  
Nurse Christine Chapel was widely considered a beautiful woman. Her uniform was always clean pressed with her long blonde hair pulled back into one simple braid down her back. She didn’t wear make-up or ever really do anything that would be outright be classified as sexy or seductive, but she was confident and sure of herself. Sometimes competence was a far better trait than sheer animal magnetism.   
  
“Doctor McCoy sent me up here to escort Commander Spock down to medical to be cleared for continued duty.”  
  
And that did nothing to dissipate any of the tension on the bridge. Especially not when Spock remained motionless.  
  
“Spock?” Uhura asked carefully. He gave no indication he had heard her. “You should go see Dr. McCoy for your  _treatment_.”   
  
Spock looked at her a moment, as if he was considering the word. Caught up in watching Spock, Jim almost didn’t realize that the word had triggered something in him. “Yeah, Spock, get cleared and come back to the bridge and I’ll even willingly visit the good Doc after.”  
  
“That is an agreeable offer.” He rose from his station, still moving too stiffly. “Nurse Chapel if you will.”  
  
It should have been a comfort, but no one felt relieved.  
  
Medical was still overcrowded with patients – the crew, survivors from Vulcan and even a few from the other ships. They were all actuals. While McCoy would have liked to examine India and Romeo in the fully secure private bay, he would just have to make sure of the private rooms in this bay.   
  
To make matters worse, Chekov had recently arrived and taken over his office. With nowhere to hide out and wait, McCoy made rounds checking on patients, but really just going through the motions. India should have been down here hours ago. Chekov should have insisted. Instead McCoy had to pull rank.   
  
“Chapel,” he said as she walked in with Spock, “Take him to private bay one, it’s all I have open. I’ll be just a moment.”   
  
“Just this way, Commander,” she said.   
  
Except Spock didn’t move. His gaze was fixed on a small group of Elders hovered together over a bed.   
  
“Commander?”  
  
“My apologies.”   
  
The pair moved slowly through the medical bay, earning few glances from the conscious patients, but there were no other delays. Chapel keyed open the door and Spock entered the room. He sat right on the edge of the bed, settling just a little.   
  
Chapel had never been in this room. It was a bit bigger than the other private rooms and attached to a small laboratory with some equipment she didn’t recognize. This room was McCoy’s dedicated space and really the only other person she had seen in here earlier was Pavel Chekov, but he seemed to go wherever he wanted. Deciding not to worry about it, she connected Spock to the leads to establish a baseline reading.   
  
What was worrying was the way Spock was tracking her every movement. He seemed to be taking in every nuance. It made her feel like some sort of animal, like she was being hunted. Only that was ridiculous. It had to be the exhaustion finally coming through. “Vitals look good. You don’t appear to have any serious injuries, but Dr. McCoy will still have to clear you.”   
  
On any other day she might have tried to make small talk until McCoy finally showed up, but what was there to say? She didn’t know him and even if she did, Christine still had no idea how to speak with any of the Vulcans after what happened.   
  
Today the rules had changed. And they were going to change just a little bit more before the day was through. In the span of two minutes, twenty-three seconds things shouldn’t have been able to go to hell.  
  
So, McCoy wasn’t expecting to find anything out of the ordinary when he finally made it in to see Spock. Upon opening the door he heard a strangled gasp followed by a thud. McCoy squinted as bright light from the exam table swallowed the room. The outlines of the people in there turned into little specks of blues and grays. His arm rose defensively as he stumbled back, trying to get his bearings.   
  
Blinded, he could only hear the swish of the door behind him and scurry of feet and instruments on the table. The problem was he only heard one person moving around and the footsteps were too heavy to be Chapel. Worse, there was something wet on the floor.  
  
“Dr. McCoy, what a pleasure it is to see you.”  
  
Before he could even fully make sense of what was happening, India had him pinned against the door. “India!” he shouted, “It is time for your treatment, don’t you want that? You like your treatments!”  
  
“There is that name again. India – it is one of many I have, did you know that? Well, of course you did.”  
  
He took McCoy by the collar and threw him toward the desk in the front room. That was when he realized the sticky substance on the floor was blood – vibrant, red human blood. Christine. Panic set in then.   
  
“What did you do to her?” He asked, trying to find his balance.  
  
Across the room, India laughed. “Nothing she did not deserve – thinking that with one smile she can disarm any man. Too bad I am no man. No, I am far greater than man or even Vulcan and you are going to help me be even better.”  
  
“Like hell I will!”  
  
“That is not the appropriate response, Dr. McCoy.”  
  
In one step, India crossed the room and picked up McCoy. Even if he did pass his hand to hand combat classes with top marks, there was no way that McCoy was going to beat a Vulcan.   
  
As India manhandled him into the attached laboratory where the imprint chair was, he finally saw Chapel. She was propped up in the corner with deep lacerations across her face, distorting her features. Her chest was rising and falling unevenly, but it was moving. She wasn’t dead.  
  
Funny how he found relief in that, even as India strapped him down to the chair.  
  
“You mess with our minds, doctor, and now you refuse to give me what I ask for. Isn’t this what you are meant to do? Fulfill the wishes of others and make sure we are all our best?” He began attaching the leads to McCoy’s head, attaching him to the imprint device. “While I would prefer to kill you, your brain is too valuable to simply lose. The only logical conclusion, then, is for me to take it from you as you are certainly not using it to its full extent.”   
  
India went over to the monitor and started to fire up the system.   
  
“You can’t imprint someone without active architecture, it will kill them!”  
  
“If you do not struggle, this will be over quickly.” He slid a data wedge into the back of the chair and then returned to the module to input a few more commands. India looked at McCoy, hesitating just a second, before he hit the execute button.   
  
McCoy let a primal scream loose, his body seizing for a few seconds before he fell limp back against the bio-bed.   
  
The monitor, which had been beeping all over the place before, silenced.   
  
”Fascinating.”  
  


  
Chekov was just finishing up in McCoy’s office when the progress was interrupted.  
  
“What? What is happening?” He tapped away at the keyboard. “The doctor and technology is dangerous, always breaking things...”  
  
Then the system froze. That only happened when –   
  
“But I did not authorize an imprint and McCoy would not do it without me.” He toggled the security cameras to pull up the feed from the lab.  
  
Nothing could have prepared him for what saw.   
  
“No,” he said, “No, no, no, no, no.”   
  
Chekov’s heart started to race. There was protocol for this. Things he needed to do. Except he could not remember any of it.   
  
Oh god, oh god, they were all going to die.   
  
Finally, he remembered to activate the Code Orange and opened a public channel to the bridge. It didn’t matter who would hear. “Shut it down! You must shut them all down now!”  
  
A single high pitch note ran through the ship’s intercom and up on the bridge Acting Captain Jim Kirk went limp in his chair.  
  
"I need a team down here now!”  
  
But it was already too late.   
  
The team arrived no more than ninety seconds later. The MACOs, lead by Sulu, were all calm and focused as they secured the area. Chekov was just trying to figure out how to breathe again.   
  
Chekov had never seen so much blood before in his life. He was a doctor, but he was not that kind of doctor. And there was blood everywhere. All over the equipment, smeared on the monitors and no one else seemed to care. It could have been him!   
  
No, no, no, it probably should have been him.   
  
Chapel was limp against the far wall, blood running down her face staining her perfect blue uniform. It felt wrong. She was always so clean cut – so nice. She was a good nurse. A good person. Certainly, far better than he was, better than any of the people in the room right now.   
  
And Doctor McCoy – Chekov couldn’t see him because he refused to step any further into the room. But he could not be heard and if McCoy could not be heard that probably meant he was unable to speak.   
  
And it was just too quiet.  
  
The men in the room were like stones. Their guns were fixed at the unconscious and bound India in the corner. It brought him no comfort. Even without knowing the full details of what happened, he could make a very good guess. This was bad. Very, very, bad.   
  
“Chekov?” His scrubbed his face, trying to focus on the man saying his name. All he saw was that Sulu had blood on him too.   
  
“What do we do with them?”  
  
Only Chekov wasn’t listening. He couldn’t hear anything over the sound of his blood, his pulse drumming in his head. At least all of his blood was in him.   
  
And God, this was his fault. He was the one who made the imprints. He assured everyone many times that it would be fine and nothing could go wrong. He had called McCoy foolish. There had even been joking about dampening the Vulcan biometrics because surely nothing would go wrong. It was arrogance – plain and simple.   
  
“Chekov!” It was the hands on him rather than the sound that snapped him out of it.   
  
“I don’t know!” He shouted, unable to control the volume of his voice.   
  
The room was too small. This ship was too small. He needed to get out, get away, to put space, lots and lots of space between him and the blood. Except with Chapel and McCoy dead he was the only one who could fix it – if it could be fixed at all.   
God. They were dead. Dead.   
  
Never coming back because they only backed up the actives. It had never even been a thought, even if the staff was just as valuable if not more so.   
  
“This is way outside of my comfort level or even my security clearance.” He was babbling now, but at least it was still in English. “I do not make these decisions, I just do what they ask of me, yes, to my own specifications, but I follow orders! And now they are dead...”  
  
He might have sent actives on kill missions, but he had never seen a body before. Chekov was allowed to stay up in his tower, safe from the reality of what kind of men they really were, but not anymore.   
  
“No one is dead,” said Sulu, “They all have vitals – weak as they are. However, there isn’t protocol for any of this, and right now you’re the most qualified person in this room, maybe on this ship right now, so you’re going to have make some decisions.”  
  
“That is not helping any!” Chekov pushed Sulu out of the way, swearing up a storm as he keyed the pad for the door. He needed to get out of this room. Maybe if he didn’t have to see or smell any of it, some sort of solution would be found.   
  
Unsure of where else to go he went back into Doctor McCoy’s office. It was probably the only place he was allowed to go at this point. And at least like a proper Southern gentleman, McCoy kept liquor in his office – even if it was whiskey. Not that he would drink it – he wasn’t that desperate. Yet.   
  
He pressed his hands into face. Chekov had no clue where to start. He was in so far over his head. And Sulu was already following after him, seeking answers. At least the man had the sense to wait until Chekov was ready to speak again.   
  
Running his hand through his hair, he let out a long breath. “Alright, we’ll have to scrub India, clean him until there is nothing left and then just keep him sedated until we reach Earth. He must have had some sort of composite event, all the psychic stress made him snap...” Chekov shook his head. How did he not see it coming? Uhura was going to kill him.   
  
“We can transfer him to another secure bay in the meantime, “ said Sulu. His tone was calm, empty but in a strangely comforting way. It was just facts and Chekov could deal with facts right now and nothing more. “A cover won’t be hard to come by – the other Vulcans on board aren’t handling the situation well.”   
  
It wasn’t a long-term solution. But he was just looking to triage the situation. Sulu pulled out his communicator and belayed the orders to his team.   
  
Chekov leaned back in the chair, relieved that he was not being asked to scrub India immediately. He was in no state to deal with such a sensitive case.   
  
“And the others?” On Sulu’s face was almost a look of regret.   
  
“I am going to have to go back in there, yeah?”  
  
Sulu nodded, ushering the man onto his feet and back toward private bay number one.   
  
“I better be getting lots of inappropriate starches for this,” he said trying to put some humor into the situation, as if they would make it better. (Nothing was going to make it better.) Chekov keyed open the door and walked in. Under his breath he kept repeating one simple mantra – they are not dead. It would be too much if they were dead.   
  
By now much of the blood was clean up. Chapel had been moved and was receiving basic medical attention. It was a good start and far better than he could have managed.   
  
Unfortunately, that just left McCoy. Taking a deep breath in, he entered the imprint room. For the first time in his career, he did not want to be here, but there was no other choice. McCoy was thrown in the corner, limp like a rag doll.  
  
“You must help me move him.” Chekov did not want to touch the body, but he needed to get accurate readings. Sulu didn’t ask, didn’t question. He just moved to help Chekov transfer McCoy back onto the bio-bed.  
  
“And set up the leads.” The two men set to work. Chekov powered up the module, trying to figure out what India had done.   
  
After a minute, they had a read out of McCoy’s basic life functions. That steady sound of the vitals became Chekov’s new mantra to get him through what came next.  
  
The vitals were only half of the picture. Toggling a few buttons, he pulled up McCoy’s brain activity.   
  
“No, that cannot be right.” Chekov plugged in a few more commands, calling up a different live brain map. “I mean that’s impossible, to cause so much damage...”  
  
“What do we have?”  
  
He looked up. “His cerebrum is completely fried, there is just nothing left. It was like he was just ripped out of his brain. See all this?” He motioned to the holographic model between them, which lacked the standard vibrant colors. “This is all scar tissue.”  
  
“But he’s not dead.” Sulu crossed the room, coming closer to the supine man on the table. “Can you bring him back?”  
  
“Back! Back to what? There is nothing left. There is no back up!”  
  
“You said it was like he was ripped out of his brain, well, where did he go?”  
  
Chekov paused, taking a moment to finally look around the room. He was missing something, because there were too many things he did not want to see. “Right! There was an unauthorized imprint, or rather what I thought was an imprint – perhaps it was more of a wipe.” He turned around and started typing away at the other monitor. Code was flying in front of him, giving his frantic brain something familiar to focus on. “Yes! There is it!” Chekov jumped adrenaline leading to a bit of misplaced excitement. “It is rather crude and maybe a little barbaric...”  
  
He lost himself to the computer for a moment.  
  
“So what?”  
  
“Doctor McCoy was saved. To a wedge.”   
  
Sulu glanced over at the wedge in the input module. Even in a world of transporter technology and warp drives, some things were still kept in hard copies.   
  
“So put him back.”  
  
Chekov wanted to snap, wanted to scream that he was not a god. Because right now he felt infinitely mortal. But he did not.   
  
“I cannot do that. I mean, the best I can do is install active architecture and imprint him with himself, but there are not enough viable nerve endings to do anything. Remember the scar tissue?” He motioned back to the map. The brain might as well be dead.   
  
“You also said he was not dead, which means at least his brain stem is still viable.” Sulu looked over at the brain map still floating in the air. “And that part, there, in the back, there’s still activity there.”   
  
“Of course, there is activity there! That is the cerebellum! There are more nerve cells there than both hemispheres combined, but that’s all muscle, fine motor skills, equilibrium. We may alter that part of the brain, but we cannot put any sort of active architecture there.”  
  
“Can’t or haven’t?”  
  
Of course he could do it. Or rather knew how to do it. That wasn’t even a question. He just wouldn’t know what the risks would be and to dump all the speech, motor development, personality, memory, language, sensation and everything really it wouldn’t be perfect. Not on the first try. And he did not think there would be any volunteers. Still, this was not standard. Many of the staff was lost to the cause. Never before had such a fuss been made about saving them.   
  
“Man-friend, you are keeping secrets from me again, what makes Doctor McCoy so special?”  
  
“Now, is not the time for questions, we just need him back online, is that clear?”  
  
Chekov did not like it, but he knew what happened to people who did not comply. “He will not be happy.”  
  
“Yeah, well, at least he’ll get the chance to bitch about it.”  
  
Chekov didn’t believe that McCoy would quite see it that way. However, they could cross that bridge when they got there. But when he reinstalled McCoy he would make sure there were armed guards just in case.   
  
“I will need time, although really Doctor McCoy would be the best qualified to do this sort of thing. He did develop that grafting technique using this part of the brain.”  
  
Sulu nodded. “So, we have need of a doctor then.” This conversation was already going ways that he did not like and now it was about to take a step further. “What about Chapel? Could you make her the doctor we need?”  
  
“You are not authorized to make those sorts of decisions! She is not a volunteer and her injuries are just superficial. She will recover!” His brush with mortality apparently came with the pesky surfacing of a conscience. With morals. And a conscience had no place in the work they did.   
  
“She’s an officer, same as anyone else, and she was being primed to join us anyway. The actives might have terminal contracts, but we’re all lifers. And like you said, McCoy was the best qualified candidate and he’s in no shape to do it to himself.”   
  
Chekov’s hands began shaking now as the adrenaline burnt off. “What you are asking for – that is a permanent imprint, a full human upgrade. That is impossible.” It was also illegal, but that seemed like the less valid point here.   
  
“Make the impossible happen.”  
  
It was disturbing how easy that order was to be made and how easy it was for him to follow. Well, easy in terms of the science; emotionally, he did not like it at all. He hated himself for it.   
  
Chapel was a good person, and yes, she would continue to be a good person, but she would never be the same – she would be different. She would be one part Christine Chapel and one part Doctor Leonard McCoy.   
  
Blending the medical knowledge and skill with her personality wasn’t much of a challenge. All he had to do was construct a few other memories – explanations for the scars on her face, maybe an irrational fear of open spaces so she would never want to leave, so no one who knew Christine Chapel before would meet this new version and start figuring out what changed. He would have to temper some of McCoy’s moral clarity, to alter those lines just enough so she could be better.  
  
Pavel Chekov created people before, but never like this. All of those were temporary. This would be the first time he created something permanent. And it would not be the last. 


	3. Safe Haven

_May 2261_  
  
Something was missing.  
  
Just because he didn’t know what it was – couldn’t know what it was – didn’t make the feeling any less real. Active designation, Romeo, born James Tiberius Kirk, was searching. There was a giant hole right down his middle and the other pieces that spilled in to fill that void weren’t right.   
  
And all wounds left scars. Even with as much care that Pike, Chekov and Sulu took the best they did was cauterize a wound in the hopes of saving what remains of the body. So Romeo was left wanting, stuck in a routine that only seemed to amplify the void. It even made the food taste differently.   
  
“Is this seat taken?” India stood across the table, tray in his hand, waiting.  
  
“Please, have a seat.”   
  
India was his friend, had been his friend since as far back as his he could remember, which admittedly wasn’t very far. He had always found India’s ears interesting because no one else in the barracks had ears like that. Romeo liked to think that they made India a very good listener.   
  
“You are sad.”  
  
Romeo looked up, no longer pretending to be interested in his meal. “I think I lost something.”  
  
“Is it important?”   
  
India took a mouthful of his steamed broccoli as Romeo considered the question. “I don’t think I can be my best without it.”  
  
“Well, if it is important, you will find it.” India spoke with such certainty, but still in the same dream-like doll-state tone. “It is important to be your best.”  
  
It was something that was heard a lot around the barracks. That was what they were here for: to learn to be their best. But Romeo still had his doubts.   
  
“Are you?” He asked.  
  
“Am I what?”  
  
“Are you your best?”  
  
“I –" India started to respond with the automatic answer and stopped. “I do not know. I hope that I am my best.”  
  
Romeo looked at his friend, little gears spinning in his head. He recognized that what he needed was India working alongside him. That felt right, but it didn’t fill the hole. “I think that together we could be our best,” he said. “We could help each other.”  
  
“I would like that.” India must have recognized that too. “And I will help you find what you lost.”  
  
Romeo nodded and then looked up, checking to see where the various handlers and aides were. They were too nosy and always watching him. It was probably not something he was meant to be aware of but he knew a lot more than he let on.  
  
“Not now, I will find you later,” he said, leaning over the table a little. Then he sat back up and a bit louder announced, “I think I will go for a swim. I like swimming.”   
  
One of the biggest problems with the barracks was that there was no private space. Strictly speaking there wasn’t a need for any. The actives didn’t need privacy. They didn’t have shame. And more importantly, they were supposed to be easy to observe and keep track of.  
  
However, that did not mean there weren’t dead spots throughout the building. And Romeo had been keeping a mental list of all those places.  
  
Three days after their lunchtime alliance, he waited for India in one of those dead spots. Just as he walked by, Romeo pulled him into the alcove by his shirt.   
  
“You must be careful, it is important that we do not touch.” India shook free of Romeo’s grasp.  
  
“Why?”  
  
He stumbled for a moment, unable to come up with any real answer. “I do not know why. It is just not something I do. No one has ever come close. Not even Dr. Chapel.”  
  
Romeo smiled. He was getting India to think. Thinking was the first step.  
  
“Can I try something?” Romeo raised his hand, hovering his pointer and ring finger above India’s temple with his thumb, not quite touching his jaw. The memory he had of this felt like a dream sometimes.  
  
There was a man on ice world. He showed him another life, a strange tale of a man who looked like him, but was not he. It had awakened something, sparking dozens of connections in his brain to fire, routing around layers of programming to create something new. From that dream a cascade of other possibilities flowed. It allowed him to see that something was wrong here. And just when he thought the answer was within reach it all fell back into his void.   
  
“I am not sure.” India stiffened, pulling away just a little.  
  
“Trust me.”  
  
“I will do my best,” he said closing his eyes.   
  
Romeo pressed his fingertips to the points, just like what he remembered from the dream, and waited. After a minute standing there, India opened his eyes. “I don’t believe anything happened.”  
  
“So it didn’t work?” He had hoped the man from the ice world had given him the same ability – that he too would be able to show his friend another life, to help him wake up. “It was just, this worked for me in a dream or maybe a memory, but I can never seem to remember anything outside of this place, can you?”  
  
India was quiet. “I like it here. I find no reason to consider life anywhere else. Although, sometimes I do feel as if there is something beyond this place that is calling for me, but I cannot be sure that is anything.”  
  
That was the thing. Romeo watched the others leave acting different somehow, but by the time they returned it was like nothing had ever changed. At some point they had to exist beyond these walls, because Romeo knew deep in his gut that there was more to the world than the barracks, but no one else seemed to be aware of it.   
  
Perhaps he had got the dream wrong. Except, the man in the dream had pointy ears just like India’s ears.   
  
“I want you try what I did to you on me.”  
  
That made India pause, a flash of something in his eyes. “I am not sure.”  
  
“You want to be your best, right?”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“Then try it.”  
  
India swallowed and raised his hand, mirroring what Romeo tried on him just a moment before. Since nothing had happened before, India wasn’t expecting anything to happen this time. There was no reason for him to be any different than Romeo.   
  
It would be nothing more than a hesitant first touch.   
  
But it was so much more than that. The touch was electric. It reached something in him that he had forgotten existed.   
  
 _Our minds, one and together._  
  
From three simple points of contact pieces of memories, thoughts, something came leaking through in uneven waves into him. It was such an impossible thing to forget. A strange thing to forget.   
  
 _As he was helpless to save his planet, I would be helpless to save mine._  
  
He pulled back in shock.  
  
Uneasy pieces were moving in his head now, he almost felt unbalanced, like at any one moment he was going to explode, or snap.  
  
“India, are you alright?”  
  
India took a steady breath in and out, trying to refocus. “I do not believe that any of us are all right.”  
  
“Then you will help me?” There would be no going back now. He was awake, he was Spock, but he was also something else. As things fired in his own head he could sense a great darkness there, bound up by a thread of light that seemed to bring him some small sense of comfort.   
  
“We will have to be careful.”  
  
Romeo smiled again, this time more openly than before. “We’ll have to be our best.”  
  


###

  
It was a short van ride out of the ATL. McCoy wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Not when he realized where the van was headed. “You gotta be kidding me,” he said as the van turned down an unmarked dirt road. A dirt road that he would never forget. He just tucked it away most of the time. “This is safe haven?”  
  
Jim laughed, gaze set on the road ahead as he drove. “That’s what they are calling it now?” Despite the laugh, his voice was hollow with just a faint bite to it.   
  
The irony was clear between all of them. By many accounts the McCoy homestead wasn’t anything great. It was 40 acres of land just shy of the middle of nowhere. He never thought he would be back here. He never wanted to come back here because he never thought it was a possibility after he left. And now it was apparently the one safe place left in the world – where people could die as they were born.   
  
Fuck, and this was where it all started. A second year med student, really no more than a boy then, got a bit curious about the work his dad was doing on the elasticity of the brain. It had started so innocently and slowly barreled into an obsession. Leonard McCoy had fallen deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. It was so deep that now he came out on the other side and the whole world was backwards and upside down.   
  
“The McCoy residence provides an ideal location.” Spock turned around to look at McCoy. “We are able to keep an eye on the activities in the ATL and it is generally considered too close to the source to be a likely place for the resistance to have set up camp. It was a rather logical option, especially as the former owner would have no use for it.”  
  
McCoy supposed he was right, locked away in the attic he didn’t really have need for a place to call home. Except this place hadn’t been home in far too long.   
  
A good portion of the yard had been re-appropriated into a vegetable garden. They were growing all sorts of things that looked ripe for the picking. In the middle of the tomato plants was a small boy, surely no more than four, pulling weeds. He was intensely focused on the task at hand. McCoy would never admit it, but it was a welcome sight, to see something that normal could still exist. The young boy looked up as the van came to a stop. A bright smile flashed across his face. He removed his gloves, throwing them in the dirt as he ran toward the van.   
  
Inside the van, Joanna unbuckled and ripped the door open. “Grayson!” she shouted. He beamed again and she jumped out to meet him halfway.  
  
“Joanna,” the boy replied, trying to contain his excitement. “I believe the tomatoes are ready to be picked, can you help me?” He extended his hand out to her and she took it without hesitation.   
  
“Sure thing, kid, I think some fresh tomatoes with dinner would be nice, don’t you?”   
  
The pair walked away and McCoy turned to the two men still sitting upfront. “Something you neglected to mention?”  
  
Jim glanced back at McCoy and then looked away. “Hey, the Vulcan was the one with the plan, but yeah, Jo’s been with us for a few years, I wasn’t about to let her stay with ‘I don’t know if I’m a man or woman’ Darnell – no kid deserves that.”  
  
That did something to him he wasn’t ready to name – still didn’t know if it was real. Jim cared about him, or at least his daughter enough to make sure she was safe. Of course that also meant that someone, probably Spock, threw Joanna at the ATL. What it came down to really, was that none of this was adding up.   
  
Everything was all fucked up.   
  
Crossing his arms over his chest, he looked over to the garden. Joanna was a natural with the small boy. God, she had become quite the young woman in his absence. Now that he had a moment to really look at the child, McCoy noticed something strange about him. Well, not so much strange as inhuman. The kid had slightly pointed ears. And while the green tint to his skin was masked by the rich olive skin tone, it was still there. A small smile tugged on his face. He might not have liked the Vulcan, but it was reassuring to know that despite this being the end of the world as it were, children were still being born. Life continued.   
  
“Is Nyota around here, then?” It wasn’t difficult to jump to a conclusion. The difficult part was the unknowing reality that question was not the right one to ask.   
  
Both Spock and Jim tensed like those words had shoved something right through the middle. Before the tension mounted anymore, Spock cleared his throat. “I believe my assistance is required elsewhere, he said before taking his leave.   
  
McCoy still didn’t like him, but for a moment he almost felt bad for the Vulcan. “Some world,” he said, scrubbing his face.  
  
Jim came around the van, shaking his head. “Thanks for the insight, any other great thoughts you want to impart on your humble creations?”  
  
McCoy sighed, looking over at Jim. What happened to him? Happened to any of them? It never used to be this hostile. But those weren’t questions he wanted to ask. McCoy could already assume the answers and really what he thought was far better than the truth.   
  
Still, there was one he couldn’t help but ask because he needed to know. “So, Nyota’s dead? Or just gone?”  
  
Jim shook his head. “Now you care about her? You got her kicked out of the program, practically end the world and now the bleeding heart comes through because there might be a kid without a mom?”   
  
McCoy opened his mouth to speak and then stopped. Nothing he could say would make things better with Jim. Or maybe there wasn’t anything to make better. That life was nothing but a memory he wasn’t even sure he fondly held onto. There had always been too many secrets between them. Maybe it was one too many things stacked against them.   
  
And it was better for Jim to hate him.   
  
“Don’t you get it? We’re all orphans. No one has family anymore, but we’re not alone and no one here is giving up that fight. Every damn day we risk our lives to undo what you caused.” Jim paused. “Shit, if only you could have trusted –” He shook his head. That wasn’t really a sentence worth completing.   
  
“We lose people every day, that’s how this game works, and you’d do best to not talk about people who aren’t here. In fact, while we’re at it, just stop asking questions altogether because you’ve been out for the last half and we’re down.”   
  
Before McCoy could even think of something to say, Jim walked away. There really wasn’t anything left to say.   
  
It might have been called Safe Haven, and it might have once been home for him, but McCoy neither felt like he belonged or that this place was particularly safe. Jim went out of his way to ignore him and everyone else didn’t know what to make of him.  
  
The only one who didn’t seem to mind was Spock. Although McCoy thought that largely due to the fact that Spock needed him. Meal times were the absolute worst, with everyone gathered in one room. No one could avoid him then.   
  
“So let me get this straight, you planned all this?” said McCoy as he took his seat at the far end of the table. It was a conversation he had been trying to have for the past couple of days.   
  
Jim shot him a warning look, but he ignored it. He needed answers now.   
  
“You wanted to get me captured and taken to the ATL? Then you sent Joanna, my daughter, into that place to what? Make me comply?”  
  
“I volunteered!” Joanna shouted from the far end of the table where she was helping three-year-old Grayson with his dinner.  
  
McCoy threw up his hand to silence her. “Oh, don’t even start with that bullshit.” It might have been an old argument, but it was still plenty valid.   
  
“I did!” “She did!” Jim and Joanna shouted at the same time.   
  
“Shut up, I’m talking to the hob-goblin.” McCoy was not having it. If Spock was the man with the plan, he better well start talking now. “Well?”  
  
“I needed to assure that the necessary conditions were in place so that we could achieve the results we desired.”  
  
It was easily the tone more than the words that riled McCoy up even more. “The necessary conditions? We all could have been killed! And if not that, I could have created something worse!”  
  
“It was a necessary risk. More so, that hypothetical situation is now a moot point. You are a good man, Doctor McCoy, and I do not believe that you would have created anything worse as you claim.”  
  
“None of us are good men!” He spat the words and everyone around the table went silent. “Hell, none of us are  _men_.” That was a point that none of them could argue.  
  
Each and every adult around their table had blood on his hands – had played a part in the game that brought about the world as it were. More so, there was no such thing as a good man anymore. Good men didn’t have a place in this world. Good men were quickly relegated to red shirt status.   
  
“Perhaps,” Spock continued, “but with the work you did we now have the basic structure to re-engineer the world with a signal pulse.”  
  
“No, I’m done with that.” McCoy stood, suddenly not very hungry anymore. “I’m not messing with any more heads.”  
  
It was a far step from any sort of forgiveness or bridges being mended, but Jim stood up, grabbing McCoy's arm before he could storm off. “Not even if you could reset everyone to before this all started?”  
  
“You think you can reset the human race?” McCoy’s voice broke when he asked the question. That was the one dream he wouldn’t let himself have. It would mean in a lifetime of sins, he could get one thing right.   
  
“We’ve been looking into possibilities, running a few different scenarios-”  
  
“I can do it," said Spock interrupting Jim, “and you will help me.”  
  
McCoy chortled. “I will?”  
  
“Yes, you will because you are the only one able to do it.”  
  
“You smug bastard,” said McCoy. He turned away to pace some, letting the idea settle in his head. He knew the science around it. Spock wasn’t wrong. A theoretical model had been created. Except – “Even if I could, any sort of pulse we created would reset everyone with active architecture – there’s no way to specify it.”   
  
“So, we’d all lose the last decade?” asked Jim, sounding far smaller than McCoy ever remembered him being.   
  
It was strange how McCoy still wanted to reach out and try to fix that. For as much as the last decade of his life had sucked miserably, he didn’t want to forget it all. It made him who he was and more importantly it felt too easy of a way to find absolution. He would have to earn that the hard way.  
  
“I have considered such an outcome, Doctor. The pulse would remain bouncing around the atmosphere for a few years, but might eventually become weak enough for it to no longer affect us. We would simply have to find a way to go ‘off the grid’ for a few years.”   
  
“Alright, so we’ll steal a ship,” said Jim far too casually.   
  
“You’re kidding me.”  
  
“Never. We’ll take the Enterprise, and then reset the world.” Jim shrugged, of all the things he had done since getting out, stealing a ship didn’t even really seem like much of a challenge. “I mean the ship is meant to be mine, or at least parts of me think that.”  
  
McCoy wasn’t sure that he liked it. He hated space. And he wasn’t sure he could be stuck in that tin can with these people for a year.   
  
“It is a rather ambitious plan.”  
  
“No, Spock, it’s just crazy enough that it will work.” Jim smiled, not quite reaching his eyes, but as close to honest as he got these days.   
  
McCoy rolled his eyes. It was clear he didn’t have much of a vote in this situation. That was nothing new. “Great.”  
  
Things moved forward from there, the main crew settling into a sort of pattern. It wasn't exactly pleasant, but it wasn't horrible either. Mostly they were all happy to have something to work toward - something that might actually work out in the end.  
  
They had a beautiful lie to believe in.   
  
That was what the McCoy Homestead had become. People were real people here - or at least as close to real people as anyone could be. It was a strange thought. The leaders of the revolution for actuals were anything but.  
  
Of course the argument could be made that everyone was a construct of his or her reality. The television shows people watched, the people a person chose to hang out with or even the family a person was born into. All of those factors and more shaped who a person was.   
  
Chekov, McCoy or any of the others who controlled the technology weren’t that different. Really all people did something because someone else told them to. It was just one person controlling all of those factors. One person made the decisions and overwrote anything there before. They could remove bad memories, addictions, or help people deal with traumatic events. Instead they created new people, supposedly better people.   
  
And then the ability to live forever. To let the poor and unimportant men be regulated to nothing more than meat suits for those who thought they mattered more.   
  
It was a rant that Spock had the pleasure of hearing almost daily as they were forced together. Without Chekov, Spock or rather the India Composite was the closest thing they had to that sort of mad genius needed to compliment McCoy’s more rational genius.   
  
"God damn it!" McCoy pushed the 3D model away from him.  
  
Spock looked away from his monitor and over at the doctor. “Doctor McCoy, I do not believe your sudden out burst is founded.”  
  
“Yeah, well, your hands work properly!” McCoy ran his hands through his hair, unable to look at them anymore. The tremor was worse when he was under stress. “The biggest damn joke of all.”  
  
“Given the alternative was death, one might assume that shaking hands could be considered inconsequential.”  
  
McCoy snorted, shaking his head. “I’m a doctor!” He slammed his hands down on the table. “A doctor who can’t keep his damn heads steady – I might as well be dead!”  
  
It was never something that Spock apologized for. McCoy wasn’t even sure if he wanted the apology, it wasn’t like India actively made the choice. There were a lot of people to blame and really the apology wouldn’t change anything.  
  
“That is correct, however, I believe that if you try to keep calm, you will be significantly more productive.”  
  
“I think I’ll be significantly more productive if you shut up for the next twenty minutes.”  
  
Spock nodded. Leonard McCoy was always an odd person for him. He was openly hostile and yet showed moments of unprecedented kindness – especially around the children.   
  
Outside the former horse barn turned lab, the other residents of safe haven were going about their daily tasks. The lie continued for a little while.   
  
Then the sirens started. Bright blaring sounds vibrating throughout the property. And that beautiful lie was smashed in an instant.   
  
Outside people were yelling. More horns were going off. Amidst all of the commotion Spock had gone completely still.   
  
“What the hell is going on here?”  
  
The question snapped Spock out of his state. He pushed up from the workbench and went right for the locked cabinet. He keyed it open and pulled out a set of phasers.  
  
“We have a perimeter breach.” He handed one of the guns to McCoy. “Perhaps you will manage to keep your hands steady enough for this.”  
  
McCoy hung back for a moment, taking the gun in his hand. “Green blooded son of a bitch.” Shaking his head, he followed Spock outside.   
  
A half dozen people had spilled out of the main house, armed and ready to go.   
  
Joanna came running down the path toward them. “We got a reinforced vehicle that just turned onto the property.” She too had a gun, ready to fight, to defend. His little girl had become a warrior. It was still a lot to take in, but especially that she wasn’t particularly little or even really his. “Where the hell is Jim?”  
  
A new wave of commotion erupted. Their leader was missing.   
  
Down the dirt road aways was a fierce dust cloud, masking a large truck as it barreled closer. They were looking to take prisoners, otherwise they would just bomb the place. Not that it was a surprise, the not-people here were always far more valuable alive.   
  
And there was Jim Kirk, strolling out of the house, not with a gun or any great plan, but Grayson propped up on his hip and an easy smile on his face. Trouble. Never anything but trouble.  
  
Everyone was looking toward him. Everyone except for Spock who was looking right down the road, through the dust to see that truck – a very familiar truck. “Jim,” he said sternly.   
  
The man came over and slapped Spock on the shoulder. “Nothing to worry about, I called for help and it looks like the cavalry has arrived.” He turned down to look at his people, all ready to go. “So you can stand down, because this is no way to greet our guests.”  
  
“I fail to see why we require their assistance.” He took a step away from Jim. Lowering his voice, he turned into Jim. “She is out of control.”  
  
“We need them, Spock.”  
  
Spock reached for Grayson, taking him from Jim’s arms.   
  
“If we’re going back, we won’t be able to do it alone.” Jim continued, still trying to plead his case.  
  
The van came to a stop just a few feet away from the group, kicking up another cloud of dirt.   
  
It was a massive six-wheel truck with a grill, lights and all sorts of reinforcements on the outside. The vehicle was perfect for mowing down dumb shows and red shirts alike. It got you to where you needed to go. Perhaps, the only thing more intimidating than the truck itself was the people inside.   
  
First out was a burly bald man with a ring of metal triangles on the right side of his face. He was dressed in the standard MACO uniform, guns and other weapons displayed all over him and at easy reach. Around his neck was a chain with data chips. That alone was scary enough. What made him terrifying was the big smile on his face like a kid in a candy store. He turned around and started shouting to the other people in the truck in some ancient dialect of Romulan.   
  
Next out was a scrappy brunette man whose Romulan had a funny accent and a blonde whose elaborate hairdo did nothing to make her any less terrifying.   
  
Spock shook his head. “I cannot abide working with these…tech heads.”   
  
The last person jumped out from the driver’s side. As her feet hit the ground, Spock, with Grayson in tow, walked back into the house. He would not be apart of this.   
  
There was no point trying to talk to him now, his mind was made up. Hopefully, he would come around. Turning back to the four tech heads assembling, Jim smiled again.   
  
“Cupcake, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.” The burly man just grumbled at him causing Jim to laugh.  
  
The last person came around the truck. Her long brown hair was pulled back in a customary high ponytail. The silver upload sites on her face stood out more against her skin tone. She was giving her team instructions in the same ancient dialect of Romulan and they all fell into place.   
  
“And the lovely Nyota.”  
  
She gave Jim a cheeky smile and pulled one of the data chips from around her neck. Clipping it into the upload module she pressed it to the right side of her face. There was a flash of pain before she put the device back. “What can I say? I heard that you were running a big party and you know me, never one to miss such an event.”  
  
“I would never dream of throwing a party without you.”  
  
It wouldn’t be long now. There were just a few more pieces to put together before they headed back to San Francisco.   
  
It might have been selfish, but McCoy was glad to have a few other people around who also seemed to be stranger than all the other misfits and oddities that called this place home. And despite whatever other history behind them, McCoy and Uhura sought each other out. It was that or not talk to anyone at all.   
  
Today, McCoy found her out by the truck, cleaning her weapons. “This seat taken?”  
  
Uhura looked up, something like a smile on her face. “If you dare.”  
  
McCoy shrugged and sat down. “Not like they can hate me anymore than they already do.”  
  
“You really think that?”  
  
Honestly, he wasn’t sure. Things with Jim had been getting better, but it still wasn’t the same. Not that he could ever go back to what was – that wasn’t even real.   
  
“I know I messed up.” He ran his hand through his hair, mussing it up some. “And I live with that knowledge every damn day of my life.” Even if it weren’t a real life, it would haunt him the exact same way. And this was worse than the tremor in his hands because he did this all by himself. “It’s just…if I think I can fix something - is that arrogance or genius?”  
  
“Do you really want me to answer that question?”  
  
“No.” He knew the answer. Genius and arrogance weren’t mutually exclusive. If anything they were the exact same thing and look where that got him. He might not have pulled the trigger, but he built the bomb. Only he had never seen it as a bomb. For him the technology was a solution, means to end pain and suffering.   
  
“It could have been a beautiful thing,” he said quietly.   
  
Uhura shook her head. She might have argued that it was beautiful in a way that only violence could be, but she didn’t. “No one should have the power to be a god, Leonard.”  
  
Was that what he created? Was that what they had become?  
  
His response was pure reflex. “Says the woman who made herself one.”  
  
She looked away, pressing her eyes closed. It was strange for him to see her like this. In his head, Uhura had always been untouchable – a pure force that was best dealt with by stepping out of her way. If he were being honest with himself he would have known it was a disguise. After all he did the same thing, except his was easier to see through.  
  
“Sorry.”  
  
Uhura shook her head, taking a steadying breath in as she allowed their conversation to fall flat. There was nothing to say, everything laid in the silence between them.   
  
The only noise across the front of the house was the creaking side door and the steady patter of two sets of footsteps. McCoy had come to recognize those footsteps, especially with how frequently they were paired together. Joanna and Grayson out on another chore.  
  
This afternoon the task at hand was the wash. Little Grayson had a basket bigger than he was, but he had a smile on his face, feet shuffling twice as quickly to keep up with Joanna. She set down her basket and turned to help Grayson. McCoy couldn’t hear what he said, but the sound his daughter’s laughter brought a small smile to his face.   
  
“That’s some kid you have there,” said Uhura.   
  
There was no hint of a smile in her voice.   
  
“I barely even know her.” Only wasn’t the only one with a child who might as well be a stranger. So, he didn’t just let that comment linger between them. “But I want to get to know her, I want to be able to show her the world that I knew before it all went to hell. So, I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that her generation isn’t lost and if that means fighting until I have nothing left, well, I never had much of anything to begin with.”  
  
She turned to look at him, considering the speech for a second, and something finally clicked into place. “Bones.”  
  
The name startled him. It sounded so much more unfamiliar coming from her.   
  
“That’s what Jim calls you.”  
  
“Not anymore.”  
  
That was what Jim called him before the attic, before he destroyed any last chance he had.   
  
“We didn’t create that.”  
  
McCoy narrowed his eyes, a very serious and a little bit dangerous glare beginning. “What are you on about?”  
  
“It was never written into his programming to call you Bones, Jim… _Romeo_  created that all on his own.”  
  
He could have doubted that fact, but at this point, she had no reason to lie to him. The plan was more likely to get them all killed than actually work. And Nyota Uhura was not nice enough of person to give him some kernel of false hope. Not anymore.   
  
It was a lot to think about. And that sort of thinking was better done away from people who could complicate matters. “I should go before Spock gets upset that I’ve been away so long.”  
  
“Before you run off.” Uhura pulled the chain from around her neck and removed a small data chip from it. “When you’re ready, load this.”  
  
McCoy quirked an eyebrow at her but ultimately took the data bit she was offering.   
  
“It’s not a memory,” she said, “It’s security footage from the barracks.”  
  
He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know what she kept there, but he was never good with just letting things go. “Thanks.”  
  
Once McCoy left, Uhura turned her attention back to watching Joanna and Grayson work together. In the time that she had been back at Safe Haven she did not approach the boy. If anything she did everything she could to avoid speaking with him. For a former xenolinguist, she didn’t know what to say to him. Spock was even more of a hurdle.  
  


###

  
_July 2261_  
  
Things between Uhura and Spock had always been difficult. She had been the one to shepherd him and Jim out of Starfleet, pointing them in the right direction, while she tried to keep her distance.   
  
It was a careful dance that came to a breaking point just outside of Cincinnati. Uhura sat in the kitchen, tinkering with a data reader she was modifying while she had some time alone. It was the sort of thing that Spock and  _Romeo_  were better off not knowing about.  
  
This was why Spock’s sudden appearance in the kitchen made her jump in her seat. Then it just became more complicated.   
  
“We are bonded.”  
  
Of all the things… Taking a deep breath in, she put down her device, not wanting to bring further attention to it. However, they had bigger things to deal with.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
She sighed, scrubbing her face with her hands. “That is...complicated.” And while in this world, many things were, their situation seemed just a little bit worse.  
  
“I believe I know, but I wish to hear the answer from you.”  
  
Uhura leaned back in the chair, not able to look at him as she tried to avoid telling their story. Not that it would do any good. “Before you entered in the program we knew each other, we were friends, perhaps something more, but you were a professor at the time and…” She paused, shaking her head. “It was never easy, but I always thought it was worth it.”  
  
Spock crossed the room trying to meet her gaze. After a moment he came to one final conclusion. “You loved me.”  
  
Another woman might have been surprised at the statement, would have wanted to hear some use of the ‘we’ pronoun, but Uhura had always known what she was getting into. She might not have always made the smart decision, but she always made the best one.  
  
“No, Spock, I do love you.”  
  
“How can you love me when I am not the man I was before?”  
  
Even with their original imprints, whether or not they were real people was a popular point of contention because there were other pieces, really other people, there as well.   
  
“You were always troubled because you were a man of two worlds. Now there are just more divisions.”  
  
“Nyota, you have not answered my question.”  
  
“Yes. I mean, no, I haven’t because it wasn’t really a choice after the Narada Incident you lost it...you ... well, Chekov thought the only way to bring you back from it was to find you another bond mate.”  
  
Any mention of the Narada Incident or Nero had always ripped something wide open in him and now he knew why. His home world had been destroyed, his people made near extinct.  
  
“And you were a suitable alternative?”  
  
She shook her head, looking away from him. “I volunteered.”  
  
“That was unwise, given the status of my mind must have been in at the same time.”  
  
Uhura laughed lightly. Nothing about the situation now was funny and nothing had been funny then. “It was the only option I had.”  
  
“I do not believe – “  
  
She stood up, cutting him off before he started on some long logical rant. “It was the only option I had because I wasn’t letting them do anything else. Okay?” She sighed, stepping away from him. It was tiring. The whole world was tiring. “Let’s just leave it at that, you can hate me, dissolve our bond – whatever you need to do, but I don’t regret what I did and I’m certainly not apologizing for saving your life or even that it allowed us to come this far and to think of the things we could do…”  
  
Not that it was just about the fight, but if he did not return her feelings it was enough of a sentiment to keep her going. And sometimes even the leader of the revolution needed a reason to get out of bed in the morning.   
  
“Nyota,” he had always said her name like some prayer and it unsettled her. “I am a Vulcan, hate is an illogical and unnecessary emotion. Furthermore, I have no reason to dissolve our bond. I merely wish that you could reap from it what I do.”  
  
She turned around to look at him. He couldn’t possibly-  
  
“I have been far too negligent a bond mate to you and I wish to rectify this. As such, I suggest that we retire to your bedroom for the evening because I do not believe any more progress will be made with your project tonight – in fact, I believe some time away could be beneficial for productivity and…general morale.”   
  
This time when she laughed it was honest. It was far from the smoothest pick up line she had ever heard, but it certainly beat ‘you can handle me and that’s an invitation.’   
  
Reaching for his hand, she led him up the stairs to her tiny room. It was little more than a bed and a dresser, but it was the end of the world, there was little time for luxuries. She brought him to the bed. Each move was deliberate but gentle. This was new for him – new and hauntingly familiar because he knew the lines of her body, the way her curves moved under his hands. They folded together, she could be what he needed and she would take what she wanted.  
  
Uhura sat back on the bed as he removed his shirt, watching the way he moved as he exposed himself to her.  
  
“Spock, you’re bleeding.”   
  
He titled his head, looking at the smear of green blood on the discarded shirt. “It is nothing to worry about, I would have thought the mark would have healed by now, however, I must have miscalculated how quickly I would heal given all the other stresses I am undergoing.”  
  
“Mark?”  
  
Spock nodded. “I would have thought you were aware of the trend going around the ‘actuals’ – they mark their bodies with a saying unique to them – typically including their name.”  
  
“What does yours say?”  
  
He turned his back to her so that she might see the still healing wound on his back. In rather uneven writing – likely Jim’s – was ‘I was born Spock, son of Sarek, but I have become greater.’   
  
“That’s not a dialect of Vulcan still used.”  
  
“You would be correct,” he said turning back toward her. “It is the dialect used around the time of the Awakening, I thought it would be appropriate.”  
  
“Of course you would.” Peeling off her own shirt she pulled him toward her. They had been apart for too long and she just needed to feel him again – completely.   
  
Spock would never get the chance to find her birthmark, written in the same dialect of Vulcan. Two weeks later before they were planning to move on to the ATL, he instead found her packing her things.   
  
“I was not aware that we had been planning to relocate today. I shall go wake up Jim and we can be on our way within the hour.”  
  
“Spock.” She said his name an apology. “We are not going anywhere.”  
  
“I do not understand.”  
  
“You and Jim have your plans, you know what you need to do and you can do so many things that I can’t. I’m holding you back.” She turned around to face him and he noticed a bandage on her face that had not been there before. “I’m not one of you, I’ve never been more than a handler and you don’t need to be handled anymore, you need to go figure this out on your own and I…I need to go fight my war.”  
  
She pulled her duffle bag up over her shoulder.  
  
“You might not be men, but you are good – both you and Jim and right now the world needs some people who aren’t so good to make sure you have a chance to save the day.”  
  
“Nyota.”  
  
“Nothing you can say will make me stay. I have to go.”  
  
“What am I to do without you?”  
  
“What you always have done – find ways to survive.”  
  
She didn’t say goodbye. She didn’t look back. She just walked past him out of the kitchen and out of their lives. Uhura was needed on another front of the war.   
  
It would be a little less than a year before he saw her again. Only he wouldn’t recognize her and she wouldn’t stay. Her fight was elsewhere, but she would leave a piece of herself with him for safekeeping.  
  


###

  
While Uhura had a number of hang-ups, Grayson was a curious and bold four year old. Finished with the laundry he wandered toward her, watching her almost as closely as she had been watching him. She should have known better than to think a quarter-Vulcan would have anything less than the top observational skills.   
  
“You and your friends seem to have some sort of upload ports on your face, what is their purpose?” It was some way to say hello, but it was far less complicated.   
  
At least she had an answer to this question. “Just that – to upload data right to my brain.” She pulled out the chain around her neck, showing him the data chips there. “The problem is that to put something new in there, I have to take something else out.”  
  
“So there are pieces of you missing.”  
  
“Not missing. They are just saved somewhere else while I don’t need them.”  
  
“But what sort of things can you go without?”  
  
“Oh you’d be surprised.”  
  
It was strange to be having this conversation – to be having a conversation at all with a child she gave up when he was only a few weeks old. There was no place for a child in her life. Hell, with the world as it was, there wasn’t even really any chance for them to be children at all.  
  
Child bodies were preferred for those wanting the full second, third or even sixth life experience. Who would willingly want to go through puberty again was beyond her, but that wasn’t her prerogative. All Nyota Uhura ever wanted was to live the one life she was given. And that was enough of a challenge.  
  
“Grayson!”  
  
The two of them jumped at the stern voice interrupting what might have been a nice moment between mother and child.   
  
“I believe you have duties to attend to in the kitchen. The vegetables will not cut themselves.”  
  
The boy nodded and scurried quickly into the kitchen. Of course that left the two of them in a place they didn’t want to be – alone in a room together on the same side of the war, but at very different ends.  
  
“I do not wish to have my son exposed to any of the technology.”  
  
Uhura pushed to standing. “It’s a world full of nothing but tech, what do you hope to accomplish by that?”  
  
“A normal life.”  
  
She laughed at that. There was no normal. Certainly not for them.   
  
But this was a fight four years in the making – one that they had both avoided. There was no going back now. It was finally now or never.  
  
“I did what I had to do – what was needed to make sure that there was a world worth anything for you to bring back. Someone had to step up and protect your happy group of vigilantes.”   
  
“You chose to be steeped in it,” he said, his emotions getting the better of him, but Nyota always complicated things now. She made the water cloudy. “You have been seduced by it.”  
  
“Is that what you think? That I’ve been some little girl yearning for what you and Jim have? Please.”  
  
“All the same, my son will not be exposed to such…tech heads. It is not part of the future we are fighting for.”  
  
She wanted to punch him. Wanted to make him hurt, but that wasn’t likely going to work.   
  
“Then I guess I’m not part of that world either.” She turned and left, storming outside to go find the rest of the team. Maybe they would be up for some target practice because if she was going to have to be stuck in a vehicle with him she was going to have to get some of her anger out.   
  
“No, Nyota, you made your choice. We all did. There is no place for any of us in this world.”  
  


###

  
Back in the laboratory, McCoy did what he did best: obsess. He felt like he was Pandora and Uhura had just told him not to open the box. Except they were well past that point, he had already let all the terrors out into the world. Maybe this was the one thing that had remained.   
  
McCoy wasn’t sure how long he sat there staring at the chip. Or even how many times he loaded it into the computer, only to close it out at the last moment. It wasn’t like anything on there would change anything. It certainly wouldn’t heal the world or even him. Really, it was just bound to cause him more hurt and he wasn’t sure he could handle that.   
  
“McCoy!”  
  
He jumped at the harsh sound of his actual name from that voice.   
  
“What has you so caught up that you not only missed dinner, but haven’t moved an inch in the past ten minutes.”  
  
Behind him, Jim was casually leaning against the door frame, a plate of food in hands.   
  
“You’ve been standing there for ten minutes?”  
  
Jim shrugged. “What can I say? I’m stealthy.” He set the plate down on an empty patch of table. “So what has you all worked up?”  
  
McCoy turned around, brow furrowed. Could he have no more secrets?  
  
“And yes, you are that easy to read.”  
  
He would have liked that it was only Jim who saw through him, but that was just dumb romanticism that wasn’t helping the situation any.  
  
“Nyota gave me some security footage from the Project, she thinks it might help.”  
  
“So, what are you waiting for?” Jim pulled up a chair next to him. Too close and yet not close enough.  
  
“I think it’s about us.” Both men fell silent – neither sure what came next.   
  
“Are you going to watch it?”  
  
“Will it change anything?” McCoy countered, already knowing the answer. There was no going back.   
  
Of course this was Jim Kirk, add that to Leonard McCoy and there was only one viable next move.  
  
“I’ll keep my promise to Spock and get his approval before killing you.”  
  
“That’s reassuring.”  
  
Jim elbowed him in the side, the two of them slipping into something that felt like it should have been. Finally he loaded the footage.   
  


###

  
“You do know what you are doing?”  
  
Chekov jumped. “Hikaru!” He shouted, more annoyed than excited. “It is not nice for people to surprise me when I am working. Also I have done this many times. So, why must you continue to insult my genius? And the constant watching over my shoulder, this does not help me work any better.”   
  
It was almost a decade ago. Both men looking far younger than they were now, before everything went to hell.   
  
“But this is a very unique situation.”  
  
Chekov made a gagging noise, rolling his eyes like a cartoon character. “I am quite tired of you all trying to tell me how to do my job. Yes, I understand, long-term imprints create larger risks. Chapel and McCoy would not leave me alone until I read their reports and the two of them teaming up on that…it it just not right.”   
  
“Remember, we talked about the breathing…”  
  
“I am breathing! This is just – there is a lot of weight on my shoulders, making sure all of the actives are ready, that India won’t … you know again and then McCoy! I do not like him one bit, he is keeping secrets from me, Hikaru, and you do not keep secrets from the programmer! Because I find out all of the secrets eventually.” Chekov let out a large exhale and looked up from his screen. “But I suppose you want a report on the updated Jim Kirk imprint.”  
  
“That is what we are all waiting on.”  
  
Shaking his head, Chekov punched a few buttons to pull him the updated brain map for Captain Jim Kirk. The giant brain with appropriately color coded regions floated between them. “It is a very beautiful brain.”  
  
“I’ll take your word for it.”  
  
“Hired guns, no appreciation for the science or the art of it.”  
  
“The point?”  
  
Chekov pulled up Jim Kirk’s original scan from when he first entered the program as well as his Romeo brain map. “You can see there is not too much different from the original Kirk and the one I’ve put together – although I did make some nice additions and removed some pieces.”  
  
Sulu still didn’t have a clue what he was looking at. Ask him to hit a target from a hundred meters away or drive anything with an engine – no problem. But get him to understand this level of biochemistry? Not a chance. Although the colors did have some similarities, perhaps that was what Pavel was talking about.  
  
“And McCoy?”  
  
“McCoy,” he said trying not to grimace and failing, “is still there or here actually.” Chekov pointed to a region. “It did not even take much to insert the protocol in the active imprint. It was easy even, like those pathways have been there all along.”  
  
“And that doesn’t worry you?”  
  
“You worry far too much, it is easy because I am not just good, but very good at what I do.”  
  
“I get paid to worry. That worry keeps us all safe.”  
  
“Well, my man-friend, I have everything under control for Romeo and McCoy, so perhaps you go do your job and bring them up here so we can put all this behind us and one day laugh about how you worry so?”  
  
“Fine, but Pike wants the full report after this is all done.”  
  
Chekov waved him off. “The captain always wants a report, this is not a worry, now go. I have a very important relationship to triple check, as you say, there is no room for error.”  
  


###

  
It was Jim who reached up and stopped the video there. And while it seemed like a good time to say something, neither man offered any sound.  
  
McCoy didn’t have a clue what to make of what was on the footage. So, Jim Kirk had brain patterns that indicated he knew McCoy before. That or Chekov was out on some crazy limb about soul mates and true love.   
  
And because McCoy wasn’t sure either of them had a soul at all, he would have to go with the first option. “We knew each other before.”  
  
Jim looked at him like he was an idiot. Maybe he was. “When did we meet?”  
  
“Officially? I think that would be the time you shot me.”  
  
Jim shook his head, a sad smile pulling at his face. That obviously wasn’t the right answer. Except he didn’t have any idea because that was the first memory of Jim Kirk he had – other than that strange urge to find the man with the too blue eyes.  
  
It had sent him digging into the Project in the first place.  
  
“Look, the memory is there, just buried under everything else you repress.” He laughed. Something had changed between them, really in Jim. “I guess that makes us a good pair after all. Or it just makes us even more fucked up.”   
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
  
“Just keep watching the tape, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Uhura wouldn’t have given it to you if she didn’t think you could learn something.”  
  
He turned to leave and before Jim reached the door the words just fell out of his mouth. “I’m sorry.”  
  
Jim stopped dead in his tracks, his expression dropped, but then softened. “I know.”  
  
“But that’s never going to be enough,” said McCoy.  
  
“I didn’t say that.” Jim shook his head. “You’re the only one unwilling to let go of all your guilt, like it makes you righteous.”  
  
“I’m not the righteous man here.”  
  
“No, you’re just the man seeking absolution. Well, I forgive you, Bones. Or at least I will once we pull this off, so don’t fuck it up.” He slapped McCoy on the shoulder.   
  
Watching him go, McCoy wasn’t sure what to think. Jim had worked to raise his daughter in his absence. They were still entwined, still wrapped up in each other.  
  
And they had a past. But could they have a future?  
  
Maybe once they survived San Francisco. 


	4. Going Back

The world might have gone to hell, but for a little while the San Francisco base had been untouchable. The east coast had Safe Haven and the best the west coast had was a fading beacon with Hikaru Sulu in a position he wasn’t ready for.   
  
Still, for a little while it might have been considered a thing of beauty. They were doing good in the world – or at least doing what passed for good these days.   
  
Except in the last three months, everything changed. Jim shot one too many people at the ATL and they were forced underground. Some might call it humility come too late, but it was Sulu just being in over his head. He had no other choice but to turn what was left back to Pike in the hope that he could save them.   
  
And Pike had been gracious. Which was to say that Pike didn’t kill Sulu or order him killed. Sometimes it was worse to live with the burden of knowledge. The best he could do was cut all of the external lines on the base, taking them officially off the grid. Then it was just a matter of restoring the men and women left to who they once were. Not that it made them anything more than ghosts.   
  
But they lived in a ghost world, so it was appropriate.   
  
Together they tried to make the best of it. Huddled together, they searched for meaning in chaos. Not that there was any to find, but there could be routine. At least that still brought some comfort.   
  
Of all of them left behind, Sulu clung onto that routine the most because he was tired. He had gone from being on top of the world to a glorified nurse. A nurse who only had one patient and today Chekov was being exceptionally difficult. Which meant he needed Pike. And he hated needing Pike.  
  
“I can’t get him to take his meds.” It shouldn’t have been such a familiar sigh, but it was. The medication didn’t really help much, but it made the Russian boy genius just a little bit more manageable.   
  
In another time there might have been some smugness, but Pike understood the reality of things. They were all just hanging on. So, maybe Pavel was the only sane one in the bunch – taking McCoy’s unintentional advice, because surely no sane man willingly accepted this as the world.   
  
“I’ll see what I can do.” Pike walked down to bed chamber five. The young man had set up camp in Romeo’s old rack. All of the little doodles and words that Romeo had written there were duplicated and expanded upon around the entire space. No one knew what it meant and any attempt to figure it out never went anywhere. Some things were just better left unknown.   
  
“Two hundred eight bones in the human body and none of them matter, none of them matter except one. One bone more important than all the others. And they need each other, need to find the connections to figure out the way to put it all back together.” Chekov sunk back down in the chamber, running his fingers over the original small drawings.   
  
“One comm message and the world changes, a whole population of people programmed to kill and capture those who didn’t answer the call…and I can’t decide what’s better. What do you do? Answer the call or don’t?” He looked over at Pike. “Don’t answer it. Please don’t answer it.”  
  
Pike let a long suffering sigh escape him as he climbed into the chamber but still keeping a width of space between them, lest he scare him off. “I promise that I won’t answer the call.” Not anymore at least. “Sulu says you won’t take your medication.”  
  
“Man-friend!” He exclaimed. “Except not my man-friend, not really, something’s been wrong with him for a while, something different and no one notices, no one but me, but no one listens to me. No one ever knows what it all means – how many bones do we need? Are there never enough? Never enough. Never, never, never.”  
  
Watching Chekov broke his heart because he had done this. Christopher Pike had personally recruited him, had molded him to be the best, to push boundary after boundary. Pavel Chekov was his best protégée and this was what he had become – a crazed man working himself into a frenzy.   
  
“Perhaps we are not enough, but we have each other and we have our minds. That is all we can hope for.”  
  
It took a moment, but Chekov finally did sit still long enough for Pike to press the hypo into his neck.   
  
The wound wouldn’t heal, but maybe it would stop bleeding for a little while.   
  
“But do we have our minds? I think that I might be losing my mind, and so many things get lost, but they know a way to bring them back, that’s what you did, you knew it too or maybe you didn’t, never could see all the nuances, but there’s more…so much more than just fixing it. We just need to figure out how many bones it takes.”  
  
The speech was only just beginning, but there was a loud knock from the direction of the main floor. And it kept getting louder.  
  
“No, no, no, the roof will cave in if they don’t stop!” Chekov shouted before diving down into the bed, curling up on himself. He probably would have pulled the cover closed if he could.   
  
If there was comfort to be given, Pike might have offered it.   
  
“Just stay here,” he said.   
  
He might not be much of an Admiral anymore because Starfleet wasn’t much of an organization anymore, but he would not desert his post. Christopher Pike had sworn to protect the men and women under his authority and would do so until his last breath.   
  
He didn’t need to ask or give any orders. When he reached the main floor, Sulu was waiting for him with a gun. With him were a dozen former actives armed and ready to fight. “We hold,” he said, “We hold until we have nothing left, do you understand?”  
  
The group nodded and Pike pushed his way to the front. He would be the first man down if it came to that. He owed these people that much. Fingers ready to pull the trigger, Pike watched concrete fly, crumbling the wall that had given them the illusion of safety for a little while. Dust kicked up, but no one faltered they all waited.  
  
There was a firm kick and chunks of rock came tumbling forward. As the dust settled Pike saw the two last people he ever expected to see again – especially together.   
  
“You sure as hell know how to make an entrance.”  
  
Jim laughed, stepping over the remains and into the barracks. Pike wondered if it was just as strange for him to be back here as it was to see him barging down on them.   
  
“And you sure know how to pull down a welcoming party.” Jim came to a standstill, McCoy following in behind him.   
  
Pike shook his head. He challenged them to do the impossible and of course they went and pulled it off. Although whether or not that would be a good thing for him still remained to be seen.  
  
“Stand down.”   
  
The crew lowered their guns, but no one moved. All of them were transfixed at the two men standing there. Jim Kirk and Leonard McCoy – gods among men even for those who were part of the program. They were the alpha and the omega.   
  
Jim walked past the group, ignoring the strange looks. It wasn’t really anything new. People often stared. “Hey, is Dr. Chapel still around?” He asked turning back to look at Pike. “I have something I need her to look at.”  
  
McCoy rolled his eyes. “If by something you mean a gashing wound you won’t let me look at, I’d say you damn well better find a doctor in this house or take your chances with me.”  
  
“She should be in her office,” said Pike.  
  
Jim might have said thanks, but it was lost to the commotion as the group finally broke. The magic was over.   
  
Only McCoy and Pike remained.  
  
“I thought you were dead.”   
  
“Don’t you know, Doctor McCoy? No one ever really dies anymore.” Pike sighed and holstered his weapon. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t try, and you know, I have been saving my last bit of whiskey on the off chance that you ever would make it back.”  
  
That was enough of invitation for him as he took Pike’s lead. Pike’s office was a fragment of what it had once been, but then again, they all were. Still, he went through the motions as if nothing had changed.   
  
“I’m surprised to see you and Jim together.” Pike handed McCoy a glass – funny how it always came back to this.   
  
“Isn’t that what you told me to do?” He took a ship, savoring the burn because it reminded him that he was alive. It was just about the only way to be sure these days. “Find him, so he could save your sorry asses?”  
  
“Honestly?” Pike punctured his question with a sip. “I was hoping he would kill you. You’ve always been a dangerous man.” Even in a world where nothing was what it seemed, Pike remained an honest man. It was something that McCoy appreciated.   
  
“Yeah, well, we’re in the company of dangerous men – and women for that matter.”   
  
Pike had nothing to say. So McCoy walked the perimeter of the office. It felt a lot smaller now. This was the office where one man made empires fall. Now he kept pictures of them on his walls. There were dozens of people he didn’t recognize, their jacket photos scattered along with all sorts of familiar faces. Nyota Uhura laughing in her cadet reds a lifetime ago. Not far away was a service photo of Spock from some award ceremony. Chapel was there, her complexion perfect as it had been once, sitting at the lunch table with him. McCoy didn’t remember that picture being taken, didn’t even remember that day. But there was proof of it.  
  
They all looked so young, but none more than Jim. The kid was breathtaking, dressed in a worn leather jacket and just fully comfortable in his own skin. That was the picture of a man who knew who he was. It was a man that McCoy could have fallen in love with. He pulled the picture from the wall, needing to hold it in the hopes that it would spark the memory he didn’t have.   
  
“As for Jim and me, who knows what we are, but we’ll burn or rise together.” That was how it ought to be – no matter what. McCoy tucked the photo into his pocket, hoping that would be enough.   
  
Back down on the main floor, a small group of former actives had gathered outside of medical hoping to catch a second glimpse of Jim Kirk. Jim sat on top of a non-functioning bio-bed waiting for Chapel to return with the equipment she needed.   
  
“Do you think I’ll live, doc?” His wound was nothing more than a three-day-old gash. Normally he wouldn’t even have felt the need to get it checked out, but it wasn’t clotting properly and that worried McCoy.   
  
“I’m sure you’ll be just fine,” she said coming back into the main bay. “Although I don’t think I’ll be able to do much besides clean and patch the wound. We’ve been off the grid so long half of the equipment doesn’t work anymore.”  
  
She set up the dated suture kit right next to him. “So this might hurt, but I assume you don’t want anything for the pain.”  
  
“Nah, the pain lets me know I’m alive.”  
  
“That’s what I thought. Well, Jim, for the next few minutes you’ll be sure of that then.” She tried to use a pinch of humor to hide her apologetic tone, but it didn’t work.   
  
As she started, Jim fought the urge to tense up knowing that would only make it worse. He took a deep breath in and let it go. He had an audience now and he couldn’t disappoint them. If Jim Kirk were meant to be unbreakable, for them, he would be.   
  
“You know, I can’t believe you’re still here.”  
  
Chapel paused, looking up at him – she reminded him so much of a McCoy. “Where else would I go? I’m afraid of open spaces.”   
  
Jim looked at her. For a moment he imagined the possibility that she still didn’t know.   
  
“They may have created me, but that doesn’t mean I’m not needed here.”  
  
She was stronger than he was. All he ever felt about his lot in life was anger – bright, hot righteous rage that wouldn’t rest until it was over. Christine Chapel had accepted what she had become and found a way to use it productively. Jim Kirk sometimes recklessly killed people, but he never claimed to be perfect.   
  
“All that could change if we succeed. Not saying the world won’t need doctors, but just not like this.”  
  
“I figured as much; Pike always said if anyone could take back the world it would be you.”  
  
Jim laughed. Christopher Pike was the source of most of his anger. Pike had used him. He had dared him to do better, knowing full well what that meant. And now Pike hoped he would save the day.   
  
“This has nothing to do with the Admiral.”   
  
Chapel raised an eyebrow at him.  
  
“You act so much like him.” He hadn’t meant to say that.   
  
“I am him, well, the parts that they thought were useful, but I’m not him, not in the way you would want.”  
  
Jim looked away. He hated that when it came to Bones he could be so easy to read. Or how persistent the rest of the world was in pushing them together. He wasn’t a damn panda and while he might have forgiven McCoy that didn’t mean he was ready to let him back in again. More importantly there was work to do.   
  
“I want you to come with us.”  
  
“Is this the part where you tell me your big plan?”  
  
Jim grinned. He raised his voice so the lurkers could hear. “This is the part where I tell all of you to get in here so you can stop doing a poor job at eavesdropping.”  
  
Chapel was nearly finished with dressing his wound and he could give his speech while she worked.   
  
“Spock, Uhura, Scotty, get your asses in here too. I need you all.” He couldn’t do any of this without them. “You all know it’s a different world out there, I’m not here to tell about the horrors out there or that there’s almost no humanity left. You know that. And you might have heard of places where people can die the way that they are born. You might think that I’m here to lead you back to Safe Haven, but that’s not my purpose.”  
  
The whole crowd deflated in front of him.  
  
“I am here to make the world like it once was because there might be a Safe Haven now, but it won’t last. We have a way to reset the world, to bring everyone back to who they should be. We can destroy the tech so that people everywhere can die the way that they are born. However, I can’t do it alone.”  
  
They all perked up that. They might have been former actives, but they were still soldiers ready to fight a war and that would always fall in line behind this man.  
  
“In order to do this, I need to steal Enterprise.” That alone was no easy task. It might be in dock at San Francisco High with a strict no fly lockdown, but it was still the flagship of a dying Federation. It had a lot of power as a symbol and that was not the sort of thing the people in charge would simply let go of.  
  
“None of this is going to be easy, and I know a number of you still feel some lingering loyalty to me because your programming said so, but this is not an order. You can choose to leave and I’ll have someone shepherd you all to Safe Haven. Or you can volunteer to stay and stand by me in what will be both the last and first hour of man.”  
  
Jim nodded and Spock set into action. He drew a line right down the middle of the medical bay, which earned quite the glare from Chapel.  
  
“Volunteers on my port, and all the sane people to starboard.” That earned a small chuckle, as the crowd sorted themselves out. People would go where they wanted and Jim didn’t hold it against them. He had meant it – those getting out of here were the sane ones. The world might not be perfect out there, but they would have a chance.  
  
“Alright, those leaving, go get your stuff and meet Rand by the door, she’ll be taking you to Safe Haven. Everyone else, listen up to Spock, Uhura and Scotty for further instructions.”  
  
Chapel shook her head. “You are something else, Jim Kirk.”  
  
The crowd around them started to disperse, leaving only a few stragglers behind.   
  
“Don’t I know it.” He flashed her a smile. “So, do I get a clean bill of health?”  
  
“I wouldn’t go that far, but you’ll do.”  
  
“Thanks, doc.” Jim jumped off the table with a little bit too much force and winced.   
  
“You need to be careful!”  
  
He waved her off. “I don’t even think that’s a word.” As he walked out of the medical bay, he saw Pike sitting on the steps. He had placed himself directly in between where each of the groups were meant to go.   
  
“That was some speech you gave there.”  
  
Jim paused, turning around to look at him. “What can I say? I learned from the best.” To think once upon a time he respected and revered this man.   
  
“Have you decided what you’re going to do about me yet?”  
  
He chuckled. After everything, the man still thought about himself. It was endearing. “What do you think?”  
  
“I imagine you’d like to kill me.”  
  
“I would.”  
  
Jim watched Pike carefully for his reaction. All he did was sit up a bit straighter, but didn’t once look away. The man had balls, sizeable ones, if Jim was any judge.   
  
“However, if I was going to start shooting people today, you’re not at the top of my list.” He had other plans for Pike. “No, I am going to give you a much harder job. I’ll fix what we did to their heads, you fix the rest of the world.”  
  
He patted Pike on the shoulder. He would give him something to think about before he left. Jim had other things to worry about.  
  
It felt good to have people moving about this place again. They were actually going to do it. Scotty had a team working to automate the majority of the systems on board Enterprise, while Spock had a smaller team working on the pulse. That left Uhura and Sulu to set up the plan to physically steal the ship and he wouldn’t want anyone else on that job.   
  
That just left McCoy.   
  
He still didn’t know what he was going to do with him. It was all just so complicated and none of it made sense. Yet he sought the other man out.   
  
McCoy was in the kitchen. Trust him to want to eat at a time like this. Still, there was something comforting about the sight – McCoy puttering about the kitchen making nothing more special than a sandwich.  
  
“You gonna just stand there and watch?” McCoy didn’t turn around, didn’t even look up from the delicate art of making a proper sandwich. It wasn’t often he had actual bread to do it, so he wasn’t going to mess this up. He might not have been enhanced like Jim was, but McCoy had a few skills of own. And Leonard McCoy always knew where Jim Kirk was.  
  
“I might,” he said. The smirk was clear in his voice. The smug bastard.   
  
“Never took you for one to just watch.” McCoy finally glanced up at him and for an instant it felt like they had been here before. No, it felt like this was how it was supposed to be. “The least you can do is appease me and eat because I bet you haven’t eaten anything since yesterday.”   
  
Jim plopped down in the chair on the other side of the island. “Aww c’mon on, Bones.”   
  
“I’m serious, Jim, eat.” McCoy cut the tuna fish sandwich in half. He passed the slightly larger half to Jim and waited for the other man to take a bite before he started eating. “How is everything going out there?”  
  
“Good,” said Jim. “Well, as good as can be expected. Spock finally got through to Chekov and they’re finalizing the delivery system. We should be underway by oh-six-hundred.”  
  
“God, to think in a few hours this might just be over.” His shoulders relaxed just a little, letting go of years of tension.  
  
Then Jim laughed and it all came rushing back. “You think that in a few hours the world’s going to be all better?”   
  
McCoy set down his sandwich, shaking his head. “What I think is that you’re scared. After tomorrow your fight ends and then you’re going to have to be where you are for a long while and it terrifies you.”  
  
Jim smirked, but it didn’t reach his eyes. It never did when he was being like this. “I hate when you pretend to know me.”  
  
“God damn it, Jim.” He pushed his sandwich plate away, standing back up. “We could all be dead in a few hours! Can’t you just stop this bullshit and let me in for once?”  
  
McCoy hoped that would be enough, that they could stop this game, but Jim wasn’t done playing yet and he was the one who called the shots. He started pacing, playing with the idea of leaving and not letting this go any further.  
  
“I’ve let you in a few times.”  
  
But of course, Jim had to push. Push, push, push, until there could be nothing left, that was what he did.   
  
“Be serious, Jim.”  
  
“I am.”  
  
He pressed his eyes closed, hands tight in fists at his sides. McCoy took a deep breath in and out, before he was able to look at Jim again. “Alright, fine, but what happens when you’re sure we’re going to live?” As soon as he said it, he knew it was the wrong thing to say.   
  
“What do you think happens?” It had gone from easy enough to deal with deflection to war. So McCoy shrugged it off and tried to leave. Jim stopped him, grabbing his arm and forcing them to make eye contact. “No, c’mon, you’re my handler, tell me.”  
  
McCoy hated that word, hated what he did, what he was forced to become for Jim. And more than anything else, how it still hung between them.   
  
And now Jim was too close, closer than he had been in months, years even – he didn’t really know how to make sense of his time in the attic. But there was Jim, inches away from him. It would have been easy to end this with a kiss, except that didn’t fix anything. “I think you’ve got dozens of people living inside that head of yours and you’re still the loneliest person I know.”   
  
Jim blinked, mouth opening and immediately closing. The great Jim Kirk was speechless.   
  
At another time, McCoy might have been proud of himself, but right now he just needed to put space between them. “You know, forget it.” He stepped back, shaking his arm free. “You go do whatever it is you need to do and I’ll do the same.”  
  
The whole thing with Jim just left his head a mess.   
  
Everything felt more difficult now, but maybe after this was over they could finally sort themselves out – figure out. At this point, McCoy didn’t even care if they still had a future together. He just knew that they couldn’t keep going on the way they had been before. It was too much.   
  
Hopefully there would be time for that later. Now, belly half-full, he made his way down to medical to do one last thing before he was ready to go.   
  
The medical had seen better days, but the basics were still there as was Dr. Chapel. There wasn’t any other place in the world she wanted to be. Nowhere else was safe, but it was also how she was programmed. And there she was doing exactly what he would have done in this situation – packing her trusted medical equipment so she would be ready when they headed out in a few hours.   
  
“Christine Chapel, as I live and breath.”   
  
She looked up, a soft smile on her face. Even distorted by her scars she was still beautiful. “I’ve been wondering when you’d make your way back here.”  
  
“What can I say I’m a creature of habit?”  
  
“I know.”  
  
McCoy paused. It was strange for him still, remembering that she was him – or at least the best pieces of him.   
  
“And I also know that you’re stalling, so you better just ask me for what you need.”  
  
“God, I never thought I would be asking for this.” He scrubbed his face. “I need to get back in the chair and I’m guessing that Chekov doesn’t go up there anymore.”  
  
Chapel stopped what she was doing, studying him closely. “You’re right, he doesn’t go up there anymore.” That earned her a glare, but it was expected. “But I can help you.”  
  
McCoy nodded. “I need you to update my wedge.”   
  
“Just let me finish up here and we can head up to the room.”  
  
Taking a seat, he let her get back to work. He could have tried to help out, but he knew that it would not have been welcomed. This was something she needed to do herself.   
  
The problem was the more time he got to sit there, the longer he began to doubt if this was the right thing. Going into that chair, by choice, was against everything he stood for. But it was the end of the world – there wasn’t really much place for morals or conscience.   
  
A few minutes later she led him back up to the imprint room. Even when he worked here, he didn’t particularly like going into this room when he didn’t absolutely have to. He couldn’t imagine it was any better for Chapel, but there she was going along with this crazy plan with him.   
  
She went right onto the computer and powered up the system. “I take it you remember how this works?”  
  
McCoy pulled his wedge from the wall and loaded it into the back of the chair. The only surprise was that it had been so easy to find. “I sit down in the chair, it hurts like hell for a few seconds and then it’s over.”  
  
“Those are the basics.” She looked up from the monitor and over at him, needing to see it for herself. “Now, you’re sure about this?”  
  
He took a deep breath in and climbed into the chair. McCoy wasn’t sure of anything anymore. “It’s the best option we have.”  
  
“Alright. Just hold tight.”  
  
Once he was in the chair, the back reclined so he was lying flat, his head surrounded by the florescent halo. His body automatically tensed. It might have been a different chair, in a different place, but the fragments of memories he had about this were far from pleasant.   
  
Clamping down on his jaw, he promised himself he wouldn’t scream. That would just bring more attention to what they were doing and he didn’t need anyone else to question him.   
  
He hadn’t counted on the system causing a light show up in the lab.   
  
“That should be it,” said Chapel.  
  
McCoy collapsed back down in the chair, pressing his eyes closed. A second later the chair was moving back to the upright position.   
  
“Now this is a sight that I never thought I would see again.”  
  
At the door stood Nyota Uhura, arms across her chest, teasing smile on her face. At least someone could find this purgatory amusing.   
  
“Yeah, well, someone will need to be able to keep guard, thought I might as well volunteer before one of you idiots got the bright idea.”  
  
“Leonard McCoy, the virtual man.”  
  
McCoy glared at her. He didn’t need to give her a response. She already knew what he was going to say. It was something he had kept saying for a long time.   
  
“I take it Jim doesn’t know about this, then.”  
  
He was just about to open his mouth, when who but Jim Kirk popped up right behind her. That was just his luck.  
  
“Doesn’t know about what?” Jim asked.  
  
“This one is all yours,” she said stepping out of the way.  
  
“Bones?”  
  
There was nothing friendly in that tone. That was Captain Asshole talking loud and clear there.  
  
“Hello Jim.”  
  
“Don’t ‘hello Jim’ me, what are you doing?”  
  
“I would have thought that was pretty obvious,” he said, finally climbing out of the chair. He didn’t need to be there any longer and it was only bound to bring about more questions he didn’t have the patience to deal with.  
  
At least it had been done.  
  
“Well, other than being a big damn hypocrite.”  
  
McCoy bit his tongue holding back his laughter. “That’s rich coming from you.  _Romeo_  became aware and what did you do? You started asking for specific upgrades and now what are you?” He crossed his arms over his chest. McCoy wasn’t trying to be righteous. He just wasn’t going to burn for this either.  
  
“I am exactly what you created!”  
  
There were a dozen of good responses to that exclamation, but none came. What could he say that hadn’t been said before? What would undo or fix anything that was happening?  
  
When it came down to it, it was true.  
  
McCoy had created Romeo, had watched him become something more and then had let that technology turn on its head. All he could do was enter into a Grade A pissing contest with Jim Kirk.  
  
Next to him Uhura sighed. “Len, why don’t you just tell him?”  
  
“Stay out of this!”  
  
Chapel walked over to the back of the chair. “This whole thing is ridiculous! You two more than anything else.” She pulled the data wedge out of the socket. “All we did was update this.”  
  
McCoy flipped his head around to glare at Chapel.  
  
“And you thought I didn’t need to know about this?” When no one answered, he turned to the one person who he hoped would know. “Nyota?”  
  
“Hey, don’t look at me, this is all them.”  
  
It wasn’t quite a lie, but it certainly wasn’t the whole story. Still, it was clear that this was going to fall on McCoy’s shoulders and Jim wasn’t going to leave until he knew exactly what was going on. Sighing he looked back at Jim. “It’s a failsafe, just in case the pulse doesn’t work, we’re creating a way to monitor the tech.”  
  
“And that required your brain map?”  
  
“YES!” He shouted. “It all started with me and it better damn well end with me. I don’t even get why you care, half the time you’re just looking for a reason to kill me.” And the other half of the time, they both just wanted to let that tension explode into passion that had gone ignored for too many years.  
  
“Is there anything else I should know about?”  
  
“No, there is nothing else, are you happy?” Of course he wasn’t.  
  
No one of the five people gathered around the chair was happy. They were demigods around their alter. The chair was a false god that created a religion to destroy the world. It was more trouble than it was ever worth. It just took well over a decade to know that.  
  
“We should take it apart before we go.”  
  
All eyes turned to Jim. And he shrugged. Everyone in the room was thinking the same thing. They couldn’t leave any of the tech behind.  
  
“Hell,” said McCoy sighing, “I’d rather just blast this place and all the others into nothing.”  
  
Jim smirked. “Being a little dramatic there?”  
  
He didn’t think so. It was pretty much the only way to guarantee that nothing could be salvaged. There was still the issue of the data out there on the network, but Scotty said he had an idea to take care of that. “Just dismantle the thing, I don’t even want to look at it anymore.”  
  
Jim walked over to the open overlook and called down. “Hey Spock, we could use you up here for a little project – one you might like too.”  
  
From below Spock quirked an eyebrow high, but still started up to the imprint room.  
  
“There’s the classic Romeo, no sense of tact or subtlety at all.”  
  
“Hey, tech head, you totally love it and me.” Uhura rolled her eyes. Love wasn’t a word she would assign to Jim, but there was some sort of fondness there.  
  
Between the five of them, it wouldn’t be too difficult to take apart the chair. It might even be therapeutic. Spock didn’t say anything, but Jim could see a sort of glimmer in his eye. He wanted this as much as any of them did. They might not be able to fix everything the technology broke within them, but perhaps they could exorcise some of their ghosts.  
  
“I hate to break up your party here, but I can’t let you do that.”  
  
Matthews and Finnegan stood at the door with Joanna in a chokehold in Matthew’s arms.  
  
“Joanna!” McCoy shouted. It wasn’t the right thing to say or do as Matthews tightened his hold. She was struggling to break free, but he was at least three times her size. She didn’t have a chance.  
  
“Finnegan! Matthews!” Uhura snapped staring down both of them. These were her people. “What the hell do you think you are you doing?“  
  
In response, Finnegan pulled out a gun and aimed it at the girl.  
  
“See, you may want to save the world, we just sort of want to rule it,” said Matthews. “And you getting rid of the tech doesn’t help us.”  
  
“What my friend is trying to say is, upgrade please.”  
  
McCoy didn’t know what to do. He had no damn control over any of it. All McCoy saw was the gun and a girl who should have a long full life in front of her. His life was the one that was already forfeit, not hers. So he just snapped. It was all he could do in the hope that a moment’s distraction might give Jim enough time to think of something better.  
  
“You are kidding me!” McCoy paused as Matthews pulled Joanna closer. In his peripheral he could see Jim and Spock inching into a better position to take the two men out. “Do you have any idea what the tech does? What it has done? God damn it!”  
  
“Wrong answer, doctor.”  
  
Then Finnegan pulled the trigger.


	5. The Second Bang

It all happened so quickly. Spock jumped Matthews, Jim made his move for Finnegan, whose fingers were hot on the trigger, and McCoy went right for Joanna. She fell into his arms and relief flooded him for a moment until-

“Joanna?” Jim shouted as he slammed Finnegan into the wall.

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” She froze. Something was wrong.

Jim seemed to sense it too as he turned around to see where the shot landed. 

McCoy’s last memory was the sheer look of terror on Joanna’s face and Jim’s shattering scream – 

“Bones!” Jim let Finnegan go and rushed to McCoy’s side. He pulled the man into his arms.

Joanna had started, and now wouldn’t stop, screaming. 

“Bones! C’mon Bones, you’re fine, you’re fine, you have to be fine.” He kept repeating a litany of words that didn’t really mean anything. They couldn’t mean anything when the person they were meant for couldn’t hear them. 

Matthews fell to the ground thanks to a well-placed nerve pinch from Spock. While Uhura pulled out her side arm and shot Finnegan clean in the leg. No one could deny that the bastard had it coming. He stumbled to the ground, too proud to scream as he clutched the open wound. And then for good measure she went over and punched him square in the face. It wouldn’t undo what he did, but it sure felt good. 

With the two tech heads neutralized, Spock turned to the screaming child. He hesitated just a moment before reaching out toward her. She might not have been his, but only in blood. Spock had helped to raise her as much as Jim. 

“Joanna, please you must calm yourself. Screaming will not help the situation.”

Everything was just a swirl of action around him.

“Chapel!” The doctor knelt down at Jim’s side, already opening her trauma kit. “You have to help him, because he can’t be dead. Not now.”

Chapel swallowed hard and pulled out her tricorder. It didn’t look good, but she wasn’t going to be the one to tell Jim that, not before she knew for sure. 

“Alright, I’ll do whatever I can, but you have to let me see.” She had a shit poker face, but Jim was hoping that she was wrong. 

Jim pressed his eyes closed. The room was silent now – far too silent as Joanna’s screams turned into muffled whimpers. His mind was racing with things and he tried to focus on his own heartbeat. It was the only sound he wanted to hear. If he was still enough he could pretend that he heard McCoy’s beating in time with his own. 

And if not that, maybe it could help him become a stone. Surely, one of the people in his head knew how to do that, but he couldn’t seem to access any of them. This was all Jim Kirk, all the time. 

“He’s dead, Jim.” Chapel’s voice wavered, the words not wanting to come out. Maybe later he could appreciate what sort of situation this was for her, but right now he didn’t even believe her. 

That couldn’t be right. The equipment was wrong. Except he knew it wasn’t. 

He couldn’t hear McCoy’s heartbeat and the shot was clean right through his head. They might have been able to perform a miracle the first time, but there was no way he was coming back from this. 

Jim sat there unmoving, not really looking at anyone anymore.

What did he do now?

Taking a breath in, he knew the answer. He would do what he always did – continue on. Just because they were down a man, didn’t mean that the fight was over. 

He laid McCoy gingerly back on the ground. Reaching up he closed those hazel eyes and pressed one last kiss to his lips. 

“Jim?”

While he heard Chapel, he wasn’t really listening. He just rose back to his feet. “Can you just take care of…” he motioned to the space around them, unable or really unwilling to name any of it. 

“Of course.”

He couldn’t look at Chapel. Not anymore – not when she was the ghost of the man lying dead on the floor between them.

“Thanks.”

Jim stepped over the chaos and out of the lab. Uhura would handle the tech heads and hopefully Spock would be able to handle Joanna. All he knew was that he couldn’t do it right then. He needed time to clear his head and find the strength to keep going. 

Without really thinking about it, his feet led him back down to the kitchen. On the island the plate with the remains of the tuna fish sandwich. God that had only been a few hours ago. 

Sinking down onto the stool he closed his eyes again, trying not to think about anything. 

He just wanted to be alone. Only now he would always be alone. 

Jim wasn’t sure how long he sat there, willing himself to not think about it, but some time later there was a gentle knock at the door.

“Mind if I join you?”

He wanted to tell her to fuck off, to just leave him here to get wiped back to the beginning with everyone else, but he knew that was just the anger talking. That wouldn’t make it any better. 

“I brought you something.”

Uhura tossed the whole collection of data chips on the counter in front of him. That prompted him to turn around and look at her. 

“Look, we’re not freak shows, tech heads, or whatever else you want to call us.” Jim moved to stop her. He didn’t want an apology, but she didn’t let him. “But if we are going to rebuild the world, I want to do it as myself.”

Some good that did them now. 

“And because Spock won’t let me beat their heads in, I thought that maybe this might be a second best option.” She pulled a hammer off her belt and took a good hard swing at the data chips. If the table took a hit in the crossfire – what was one more casualty? 

Jim jumped back, not ready for plastic bits to go flying. He watched her whack at them a few times, seeing some of that rage surface. She might not have loved McCoy like he had, but she did love him and she was hurting too. More so because those were her people on the wrong end of the gun and that made her responsible. 

“Hey! You think I can give it a go?” Jim held out his hand for the hammer.

She paused mid swing, hammer high in the air and seemed to collapse all at once, coming back to herself. “I am sorry about – ”

“No,” he said, “you don’t get to be sorry, all you get to do right now is hand me that hammer and step back.” 

And Uhura did just that.

Jim took the first swing, watching the little pieces fly across the room. There was something freeing about it. Freeing but still empty because he was just killing the tech and not the man, when this time it was the man who made the choice. 

“I can’t believe Spock won’t let you take a hammer to Finnegan’s head, but hey, I’m sure you’ll win some points by destroying the tech.” The words were just flowing now, absolute word vomit with no charm or purpose, but he just needed to get it all out. “Then you get back together and be your happy little family.”

He paused to re-gather the pieces into an easier target. 

“I don’t think that’s how things end for us.”

“Why?” He swung again, harder this time, missing the chips altogether. The island split under the pressure and he looked over at Uhura. She better have a damn good reason for that. 

“I don’t believe it will work out.”

Jim swung again. “But you love each other.”

“I think that there comes a point where there are just too many differences and obstacles between people to be together.” 

Something in Jim exploded at that. In his life the people he loved always left him. They never came back, or they did and he was never able to keep them. He just didn’t have the patience for this. 

“But he’s alive and he’s here with your son!” Jim’s fury reignited, the hammer swings going wild. The data chips were in pieces, leaving him to just keep breaking the island over and over again. “And he’s dead.”

Jim hit the edge of the plate, sending it flying across the room. "He’s just dead. And I've never told him.” As the plate crashed into the floor, Jim slumped back against the wall, no longer able to maintain his anger. 

Uhura jumped, but otherwise remained unmoving. She had never seen this side of Jim Kirk and she didn’t know what to do with it. How could she even begin to console him? 

But then it got worse. It was their last day on Earth and it was also the first time she saw him start to cry. “Len's dead and I'm alone.” Sinking to the floor, he started to shake. “I’m always alone."

Kneeling down in front of him, she hoped that he would be able to get it all out now and be able to pull back together. It might have been selfish but they needed him right now. Jim Kirk had always been the glue that kept them together. 

For now, no one else had to know what was happening down in the kitchen. Back up in the lab, the team was working hard. 

Better yet, with a project to focus on Chekov normalized a little more. He was almost like his old self. Sure, he would still go off on tangents perhaps a little more out there than usual and in Russian, but he never stopped working. 

Sulu would call it one of his better days. Spock had no such standard by which to measure, but was simply pleased to have the actual Pavel Chekov working on the project instead of the version that lived within the India Composite. 

“McCoy’s work was prefect, well, nearly perfect, so close but not quite there. I cannot seem to get around one teeny tiny little problem. And knowing the doctor he will not be happy about what it means.” No one had told him that McCoy was dead, which was for the best. A dead body was never a motivational tool for him. “You see, this power source here, it will need to be manually input just before it is triggered.”

“Wait,” said Sulu. He knew his role in the lab was nothing more than a glorified babysitter because for whatever reason he was a calming influence on Chekov, but even he understood what Chekov was saying. Or not saying as the case might be. “You mean…you can’t!”

“Yes, man-friend, see while we can make the whole thing work, save the world, undo what we did and all that, someone will need to be there to set it off and there is no way of knowing what will happen to someone in such close range, like an egg on a frying pan maybe.”

“Chekov!” Sulu shouted a bit too loudly causing the other man to jump. “Pavel,” he said quieter, “you can’t, you’re smarter than that. There has to be another way, another option.”

“It is okay, Hiraku, I will do it. I would not trust anyone else with it.” He looked up at Sulu, actually making eye contact with the older man. “I want to do it.”

Sulu could see it all there. All of the weight of what they were forced to do. None of them had truly had an easy time of it, but he had just been a child when he was brought onto the project. This was going to be his way out. 

“You don't have to do it.” Sulu grabbed Chekov’s hands, wanting to comfort him, to give him back everything this place had taken from him. He might have given it freely, but Chekov was never really given that choice, he was just given orders. “And you’re not going to do it alone.” 

“Aww man-friend you do care! But it is not necessary. They need you more than they need me. I do not think I am there all of the time, but I am a very good pilot.”

He laughed, he hadn’t meant to, but it was the first emotion Sulu had access to just then. “Maybe as a navigator, but I wouldn’t trust you steering if our lives depended on it.”

Chekov shook his head, pulling his hands free. “Do you not understand, Hikaru? Our lives do depend on it.”

The two men fell silent. Neither would budge. They both had a lifetime worth of demons they wanted to exorcise and someone had to be the big damn hero.

Spock came back over to them. “I am sorry to intrude upon your conversation, however, I wanted to inform you that any and all discussions of sacrifice are unnecessary. I believe that I have a volunteer who will perform the task for us.”

That should have been good news. But Sulu couldn’t deny the disappointment he felt. Sure, it might have been cheating, but for a moment he saw a way out. 

“I will just need to confirm with Nyota and Jim. In the meantime, Mr. Sulu, can you please load the device into the shuttle? Mr. Chekov, please oversee the transfer to make sure he does not disrupt any of our work.”

“Aye, sir.”

With the two of them given a more appropriate task to work on, Spock set off in search of Nyota and Jim. He didn’t have to look long as he found them coming from the kitchens together. 

“Nyota, Jim, may I have a word?”

They both stopped short like two children caught with their hands in the cookie jar. It was silly because it wasn’t like they had done anything wrong.

“You know, I’m feeling generous, Spock, so have as many words as you like.” Jim might not have found any strength, but he knew that he had the willpower to pull through. At his core, Jim Kirk was a survivor. That and losing it for a few minutes made him feel just a little more volatile. 

Spock quirked his brow at the wordplay, but didn’t engage Jim on that level. There were more important things at stake. 

“We have encountered a complication with the device.”

“I thought you were sure that it would work?”

“The device is still functional, however, Chekov is certain that it will need to be manually activated.” 

“I’ll do it,” said Jim without even thinking. 

Uhura couldn’t contain her outburst protesting Jim’s offer, but at least Spock was a bit more composed. 

“There is no need, Jim. I believe Finnegan and Matthews were interested in upgrades, I merely suggest that we give them what they asked for.”

“Spock that would be –”

“It is no worse of a fate than you have assigned them yourself.”

Uhura had nothing to say to that. He was right. Better yet, his option was even a little bit more humane. Bashing someone’s head in was messy, giving them what they thought they wanted, even if that did include programming them to become willing sacrifices – well, it seemed appropriate. 

Jim shook his head. “Just Finnegan.”

“But-”

“No buts, just Finnegan. Make sure it happens.” There was no way that Jim was going back in that room again. He was done with this technology. “Give him what he wants.” Jim walked off and this time no one had any intention of following him. Not with what was on the table now. 

Uhura turned to Spock. “Are you sure you want to do this?” 

“As I said it is a logical solution to our current predicament.”

She looked up at him, searching for something. This was the man who had yelled at her, accused her of being seduced by the technology now willingly using it against another person. Uhura had no authority to call him a hypocrite, nor did she think he was one. He was starting to understand. 

Maybe, just maybe there would be hope for them yet. 

Seeing Jim break down had changed something. Or rather it reminded her of something she had always known – the world was a fragile place and despite how much they tried no one got to live forever. 

“Spock?” He looked over at her. “If we survive this, do you think that I can properly meet Grayson?”

She wasn’t sure if she was ready to be a mother, but she was ready try. Really, it was the only challenge she would have left. 

“I believe that he would appreciate the chance to get to know you.” 

It wasn’t the best time to have this sort of conversation, but it felt necessary before they condemned a man. 

“Alright, let’s get this over with then.”

Finnegan was being held in the empty room down the hall from the imprint room. There was no brig to throw him in anymore and this room was closer. 

He was slumped against the far wall, bored expression on his face, trying to maintain was little since of agency he still had. “Oh great, you’re finally here to kill me. I thought you were going to make me sit here and wait longer on the off chance that I would repent.”

Uhura just smirked at him. She crossed her arms over her chest not entering the room further, not sure she wouldn’t be able to hit him again. It was a good thing that Spock had far more control than her.

“That is incorrect. We are here to give you the upgrade that you desire.”

It took him a moment to understand what was being said, but he did get it. Finnegan might have been a single-minded tech head, but he wasn’t a complete idiot. 

Finnegan lunged for the door, trying to escape, but he was outnumbered and out powered. And that was just against Uhura, with Spock in the mix, he didn’t have a chance. They wrangled him down the hall and into the chair. Sean Finnegan would get the honor of being the last subject to be imprinted in this house. 

The unanticipated task delayed their departure for the space dock by only an hour. The twelve piled into the shuttle as ready as any of them would ever be. Every man and woman with the exception of Chekov who was far too jumpy around guns let alone trusted to carry one and Finnegan were armed to the teeth. 

“And you’re sure that you can do this without being seen?”

“I’ve been flying shuttles since I was twelve,” said Sulu with any easy smile. Despite all else, this was where he belonged. “I’ve charted a route in the blind spot of the base, the tricky part will be getting a clean lock on the dock without them noticing.”

Jim nodded, perhaps a bit more hands on than his normal style of command, but he needed the distraction. “What are our possibilities on that?”

“We have a fifty-six point three chance of remaining unseen until we disembark the shuttle.”

“Okay, more than half, we’ll have to take those odds.” Jim settled into the co-pilot seat. “Alright, Sulu, hit it.” 

It was a tense thirty-minute shuttle ride to spaceport because this whole plan hinged on a small margin of error. And really, getting to the dock was the easy part. 

“Alright, when we land it’s going to bad. If they are smart, that place will be teeming with MACOs who won’t care about survivors, even if they are us.” Even if they had been more valuable alive once, that was changed now. “Spock will take Riley to the control office from the port side. Sulu and Uhura will come from the starboard – with any luck one of you will reach it disengage the port locks. Rand, you’re with Scotty and Chekov heading right for the ship. Chapel is with Joanna, me and my pal Finnegan over there.”

“Great,” said Joanna rolling her eyes, “I get to sit here and wait for you all to do the fun stuff.”

“That’s right. I know you’re good in a fight, you don’t need to prove yourself there, but I need you back here protecting the most important piece.”

Sure, getting the ship was critical to making sure they escaped in one piece, but launching the shuttle with the device in Finnegan was the main point. Anything beyond that was just bonus. 

“Yes, sir.” She gave him a salute that earned her a cheeky smile from him. 

“There is going to be a lot of confusion, probably a lot of bodies too and I need you all to stay on task, is that clear?”

At least it was easy to slip into the captain persona and not have to deal with what Jim Kirk was going through. He would see this through until the end.

The crew nodded in agreement and Jim turned his attention to Sulu. “Alright, you’re up first.”

While there might have been some doubt about Sulu’s abilities in other areas, when it came to flying there wasn’t anyone better – not even among the imprints. Still, everyone fell silent as they approached. Perhaps another man would have prayed to god or sought some sort of clarity. Jim Kirk just stared straight ahead, watching their approach. 

“We’re in.” 

“Nice job, Sulu.” Jim unhooked his harness and moved toward the back of the shuttle. “Now or never time people.”

Jim opened the shuttle’s back doors, his phaser drawn and at the ready. He had been holding it back before, but now that rage that he hadn’t even begun to let out back in the Starfleet kitchens was about to be let loose. Jim Kirk wanted to hurt something and a MACO who may or may not have shot first was fair game.

Jumping out of the shuttle, he took the spaceport at a run. There was no time for hesitation, no space for second chances. It was just lock, shoot, and then move on to the next before they triggered the alarms. 

The odds might not have been stacked in their favor, outnumbered 6 to 1, but Jim and his men had something the MACOs didn’t – an actual reason to fight and nothing left to lose. One way or another, today it was going to end. 

“Bay is clear,” he said turning back toward the shuttle. The group was still standing there, eyes wide, slack jawed at the man in front of them. Jim supposed he had to be quite the sight, but he was fighting anyway. There wasn’t time for shock – at least not with his crew. “Teams dispatch now!” They jumped then, shaken enough to start moving once more. “Maintain open lines of communication, any element of surprise that we had is over now. Good luck.”

The rest of them stormed out of the shuttle going to their posts. 

That left Scotty and Joanna to begin transforming their shuttle from personnel transport to savior. His sole job was to keep any curious MACOs out, while Chapel kept Finnegan occupied. 

It was chaos from there, phaser fire, screams of men about to die for real. Maybe it was horrible, but Jim sort of loved it. The adrenaline pumping through his veins, it pushed everything else going on in that too busy head of his to the side. He simply couldn’t think about anything else. 

All he saw was whatever walked into his target range and all he felt was nothing. Maybe he wasn’t even Jim Kirk then, but Romeo. It was appropriate. Except he didn’t think that Juliet – and god how Bones would kill him if he knew he thought of him like that – was playing at being dead. Sometimes dead was dead, and McCoy’s body lying in the imprint room was dead. No questions about it. 

He didn’t hear his name being called the first time, instead focused on the MACO in front of him collapsing to the ground.

“Jim!” He heard it the second time and went running back to the shuttle bay. Joanna was standing there, not a scratch on her. “We’re finished in here, systems are all online.”

“Great,” he pulled out his spare side arm and handed it to Joanna. “You wanted to prove yourself, now is your time, you think you can manage a clear path to Enterprise?”

“That shouldn’t be too much of a problem.” She smirked, checking to make sure her gun was primed. “Scotty, Chapel, you’re on me.”

Scotty laughed, coming toward the pair. He clapped Jim on the shoulder. “Later we’re going to have words about the fact you put a lass in charge of the team.”

“What can I say? The girl’s a good shot.”

Scotty started off behind Joanna, leaving Chapel standing there in front of him. “You’re not coming with us?” She knew him better than she should be allowed. 

“Someone has to make sure that Finnegan doesn’t suddenly evolve before the pulse goes off.”

Chapel’s eyes narrowed. “Fine, but after it clears dock, you better be en route to that ship with us.” She put her hands on his shoulder, so much different than how Scotty touched him just a moment ago. If he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend that she was Bones lecturing him. “I mean it.”

Except that she wasn’t.

“I’m not looking to die just yet, so don’t you worry.” He had come too far to miss the final act now, but once that metaphorical fat lady sung, all bets were off. It probably wasn’t the comforting words she wanted, but those were the only ones she would get. “Go, I’ll see you soon.”

She lingered just a moment too long, but didn’t call him on the lie. Jim was glad when they were gone, he didn’t have to worry about keeping anyone safe. He just needed to stay here and mow down MACOs who thought they could escape. 

If this was going to be his last twenty minutes alive, he could only think of a few better ways in which to spend it, but this was definitely top three.

If only Darnell was here. God, how he would like to kill that bastard one last time before condemning her back to the limitations of a single body – if her original body even existed any more. 

“The base is ours.” Jim wiped his face, something like relief washing over him. Not that they were done yet. He pulled out his communicator. 

“Then we’re going on as planned.” He holstered his weapon. There was more than enough blood on his hands already, but it didn’t feel like it was enough. None of it calmed his anger because none of it brought McCoy back. “Finnegan is prepped, I’ll just need to fire up the launch sequence.”

He didn’t really want to see the man, even if he was in a doll state, but he wasn’t going to let anyone else do this. 

“Jim,” said Uhura across the open line, “Are you sure about this?”

Jim almost laughed. Now, she was having second doubts, when they were so close to the end?

“Nyota, I have never been more sure about a thing in my life.” It didn’t matter if that was true or not, it was what she needed to hear. Nyota Uhura might have fashioned herself into a killer because the world demanded it of her, but at her core she was a linguist. 

Jim Kirk didn’t have that particular problem. At his core, he was a killer. “The shuttle will be on autopilot and Finnegan here wants to be his best so he won’t let us down, will he?”

“It is important to be your best,” said Finnegan echoing it back. 

“See.” Smile evident in his voice, doing his best to be the cocksure person she expected of him. And even if the façade had worn thin, he trusted her to not look too deeply.

“It’s just…” she paused. The silence weighed heavily between them. “After this we’ll never be able to go back there.”

Jim turned his attention toward a nearby view port looking down on Earth. From this distance it looked just sort of peaceful. The distance hid the reality, which wasn’t easy to forget, but sometimes you wanted to so badly you did. 

“There hasn’t been anything down there for me in a long time. Everything we need is up here now. Everything you want it on our ship waiting for you.” 

Jim was sure she wanted to say something, but nothing she could say that would change his mind or make any of what he said any less true. “Just go, I’ll see our boy off and then be with you in a few minutes.”

“You better be.”

He closed the communicator and turned toward Finnegan waiting by the shuttle. “I guess that just leaves us then.” There was that rage again.

The only thing he could do then was pull back his fist and punch Finnegan hard in the face. He stumbled backward covering his nose. “I think I am hurt.”

It probably wasn’t broken. “You’re fine,” said Jim. It felt good to have Finnegan standing there all doe eyed, blood trickling down his face. It calmed the beast just a little. “Now, you killed someone that I cared a lot about, but you’re going to make that up to me and finish this once and for all. Do you remember what you have to do?”

“I am to put the ball into the container when I am told.”

“That’s right.” He led Finnegan into the shuttle and made sure he was strapped in. “So go, and be your best.” 

As he turned to leave, Finnegan grabbed his arm. Jim nearly shot him just then, thinking the worst had happened, but nothing had changed. Finnegan was still in his doll state. 

“Thank you.” 

“Don’t mention it.” Jim pulled himself from Finnegan’s grasp and exited the shuttle. Behind him the shuttle systems powered up. It wouldn’t be long now.

Once the shuttle was clear of the bay, he went back to the window to watch the shuttle move away from the spaceport. 

“Jim.” He reached up considering if he should turn off the communicator and just stay here. “Jim, I am aware that you can hear me. It is time that you return to the ship or else we will not be able to get clear of the pulse.”

Jim said nothing. Instead, he pressed his hand to the window. He wanted to stay here, wanted to wipe it all out. The shuttle was in range now. 

“See you on the other side.”

That was when the swirling in his stomach started, signaling the familiar pull of the transporter.

Of course, Spock had planned for this possibility. 

As he dematerialized from the deck he saw the shuttle explode into a beautiful nebulae rippling through the atmosphere. 

The universe began with a bang. It seemed only appropriate that it would end that way as well.


	6. Ever After

Space was big. Really, really, big.  
  
It was full of infinite possibilities and beautiful worlds that he had once yearned to explore. It had never felt empty before. Now, Jim felt lost among it all, like he might slip away at any moment.   
  
Earth was saved. Hopefully this time for good, or at least long enough that he wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. The Federation was in good hands and more importantly it was no longer his fight. It couldn’t be his fight anymore.  
  
Instead he was left with a vast emptiness of space and a hodge podge family that he had collected over the years. A family that he had fought alongside, prepared to give everything, to make sure that they had a future.   
  
Sulu was at the helm with Riley at navigator seat to his right. Joanna had taken a spot at the science station with Grayson in her lap, leaving Spock to stand at the tactical station just until they were in the clear. And finally, Nyota had taken her rightful place at the communications station.   
  
It was barely even a skeleton bridge crew, but these were some of the finest people he could have asked for. He didn’t even care if they weren’t plain and simple people – they were his. It was almost enough to make all that empty darkness feel like a smaller infinity. Almost, except for the empty spot just behind the captain’s chair.   
  
No, that was a void he didn’t think he would ever be able to fill. He had saved everything except for the one thing that apparently mattered just a little bit more than all others.   
  
“Jim, we just cleared Federation space.”  
  
He spun around toward the science station, flashing Joanna a bright smile. She was a tough girl – probably the toughest he knew. And she was doing a lot better than he was.  
  
“Excellent,” he said trying to keep his voice light. This was supposed to be a good thing. Jim twirled in his chair back toward the others on the bridge. “So, where do we want to go? We’ve got plenty of galaxy to explore.”   
  
Spock glanced back toward him, a slight arch in his right brow. “I believe I have just the place in mind.”  
  
“Then she’s at your command, Spock.”   
  
“Very well, Captain.”  
  
Jim froze. Even if it was a courtesy because he was in charge of the ship and habit because of programming they all still had – he wasn’t sure he wanted the title. It held too many strange ties within him and maybe he would be better without it. All he wanted was a ship and a star by which to steer her.  
  
“Jim is fine,” he said “That goes for all of you, no titles on this ship. We’re not Federation men and women anymore and this isn’t a Federation ship.”  
  
It would be better that way. Starfleet had taken so much from him. They took his family, took his memories, messed with his mind and then took something he didn’t know he needed until it was gone.  
  
McCoy was gone.   
  
His heart seemed to beat only in that rhythm, like the rest of his life would be marked with that absence. Jim used to be good being on his own. He would have to learn again because he couldn’t spend the rest of his life mourning.   
  
“If you guys have this under control, I’m going to go hit the rack. I think I could sleep for a week.”  
  
No one objected. He didn’t expect them too. They all understood. Jim Kirk might have saved the world, but it didn’t feel much like a victory.   
  
Once off the bridge, he let the façade drop a little. He didn’t have to put on a show anymore, he could just be. It was odd to walk these corridors without dozens of other people running about, stranger still to not have some great mission to take on.  
  
Maybe Bones was right.  
  
Ahead of him, the doors to the lift opened. “Scotty! Chapel!” He said, that cheer easy to call upon because even hurting, he was still Jim Kirk. All he had to do was slip someone else on. “You going to join the party on the bridge?”  
  
The pair hung onto each other, laughing, happy. And wasn’t that a sight to be seen. Happiness had certainly been a long time coming.   
  
“Aye, Captain, that’s’ where we were headed, just had to take care of one wee little thing with the crew quarters first.”  
  
Chapel pulled on Scotty’s arm, tugging him down the corridor. Judging by the look on Scotty’s face and Chapel’s blush it was either sex or something else – although it could very well be both. So, really it was better not to ask. If it was something he was meant to find, he would come across it soon enough.  
  
For now he was content to be alone again. Well, as alone as he could be with the dozens of people buzzing around his head.   
  
Reaching out he ran his fingertips along the walls of Enterprise, remembering each story these panels held. She had always been a good ship. Even if nothing else was real, she had been real. Enterprise had carried some version of him and Bones before and she would never forget. More importantly, Enterprise was home. Jim Kirk, the construct, the man, the freak show, had found a home here – as much as he could ever find one.   
  
He took the lift to go to the officers’ quarters, humming a song in his head to fill the silence. It was harder than he expected to walk down to his old quarters. There was just so much that happened behind those doors. So many different memories caught in that room.  
  
Romeo had come into life in that room. Or rather Jim Kirk had become more than the sum of his parts. He had felt alive for the first time.   
  
He kissed Bones for the first time in there. There were limbs and sticky sheets, bony knees, and clashing angry mouths. But there was also laughter bright and unguarded. Maybe it was programming, something someone created, but that didn’t make any of it any less real. It didn’t take away the hurt he felt knowing that none of that could ever happen again.   
  
Still, he loved Leonard McCoy with everything he had. And he knew that he was loved in return.   
  
Maybe he should have sealed the room and found someplace else. It would have been easier, to not have to face any more ghosts, but it would also make forfeit so many good times. If all he had of Bones was this room and the memories it held, then he wasn’t going to let it go. He would hold onto it, no matter how much it hurt because at least that was something.   
  
Taking a deep breath in, he keyed open the door and stepped inside.  
  
It was exactly how he left it.  
  
Well, it was nearly how he left it. On his monitor was a flashing message – a data packet – labeled as ‘Bones.’ Jim swallowed hard. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to walk down this path, to see what was in that packet because what if it undid everything else?  
  
But he was Jim Kirk and backing down was never an option.   
  
He took a seat at the station and with as steady a hand as he could manage, he clicked open the packet. The whole ship seemed to lurch, lights flickering, systems whirling far down in engineering as it processed the massive data packet.  
  
Then something wonderful, but strange happened.   
  
In front of him a 6’1”, broad shouldered man with cute hair and a permanent scowl on his face materialized.   
  
Jim lost all of his words.   
  
“God damn, son of a bitch, what the hell is this shit…”  
  
Finally, Jim remembered one word. The most important word he could think of. “Bones?”  
  
McCoy turned around to see Jim, unmoving in his chair, but in a familiar setting. A smile broke over his face. Jim was on board Enterprise. It meant they did it.  
  
“Jim,” he responded.  
  
After a minute lost standing there, Jim leaped from the chair to wrap his arms around Bones and tell him all the things he never thought he would be able to. Except his arms went right through him. McCoy was nothing more than a holographic image.  
  
Jim’s entire face dropped as he fell back down into the chair. “Bones, what did you do?” This time when he asked that question, it was filled with nothing but heartache. There was no place for anger anymore.   
  
He wasn’t the only one surprised, but unlike Jim, McCoy had prepared for this possible outcome. He might not have liked it, but it was the ultimate failsafe just like he said it would be. He had just hoped that it wouldn’t have come down to this.   
  
“I always said it was going to be you and me, kid, until the end, right?”   
  
“But this…”  
  
McCoy shook his head, cutting Jim off before he could start.   
  
“It’s different,” he said with absolute certainty, “but it’s me. I’m me, and I couldn’t have you wandering around the galaxy without me. Who knows what sort of trouble you would get into on your own.”  
  
“But I can’t touch you.”  
  
He rolled his eyes. “I’m the god damn ship, Jim.”  
  
Jim’s eyes went wide with a fleeting excitement. “Really?” McCoy should have known. The kid always loved the ship just a little bit more than anything else.   
  
“Of course not! The ship isn’t a person, never will be.” It was an old debate some version of them had, apparently one that would never rest. “What I am is complicated. Right now I can feel pieces of my consciousness reaching out across the nets, replicating, connecting to thousands of different outputs and readings, seeing what thousands of different people are doing.”  
  
It made him the ultimate security system. Who better to protect against the technology coming back than him, watching all of it all at once?  
  
“What about us?”  
  
“I’m still right here with you, always with you, kid.” McCoy moved closer to Jim, mindful not to get close enough to touch because he wasn’t sure how either of them would deal with that right now. “And we have a whole universe of possibilities in front of us because you stole the best damn ship in the Federation.” Jim seemed to perk up at that because this was his ship and maybe he could have it all. “I’m sure one of those planets has something we can make use of. We’ll figure it out.”   
  
Jim looked up at McCoy blinking back the tears he wouldn’t let himself cry.   
  
“For once, we have nothing but time and there isn’t a damn place you can run to that I won’t follow.”  
  
Maybe he should have said it then – those words he had never said out loud before, but he couldn’t. Not yet. Not like this.   
  
When he said those words he wanted to be holding Bones. And he wouldn’t rest until he fixed that wrong.  
  
“Alright, Bones, you and me, until the world ends.”  
  


###

  
_Too many lifetimes ago..._  
  
The Starfleet Clinic was always crowded, especially on the weekends. There was something about the small window of freedom known as town liberty that prompted the cadets to do all sorts of stupid things. They were idiots.   
  
Then again, he was the one stuck overseeing the clinic today. So, maybe Leonard McCoy was the idiot. Although he liked to think that it was better than the alternative of drinking himself to death.   
  
At least these days he could manage to look at his own reflection.   
  
“What do I have?” He asked the nurse at the dispatch center.   
  
“First year cadet, with what looks like a few broken ribs, but he claims he’s fine.”   
  
She handed him the chart. McCoy couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “Of course he does.” They were all the same.   
  
McCoy walked over to the third bed, activating the security wall behind him. He never did like anyone watching him as he worked, especially seeing how a few of the other patients and nurses seemed to be quite interested in this one.   
  
Not that he could blame him. The kid was attractive, blond hair, blue eyes, no obvious lacerations, fractures, rashes or other anomalies that he could see.   
  
“Hey, you’re McCoy, right?” McCoy paused to glare. “McCoy. Leonard McCoy from the shuttle? All I got left is my bones.”  
  
McCoy let out a long breath. Apparently he had a talkative one, but he also had excellent ignoring skills and he wasn’t getting paid to work on his bed manner. He took a few notes on the chart and then set it down on the bed table.   
  
“You don’t talk a lot, do you? I’m Jim Kirk, you shared your booze with me.”   
  
“That’s a great story kid, you going to keep still so I can see what you have going on here?”  
  
Jim flashed him a smile, far too bright and certain of himself, for a kid with possible broken ribs. But he sat still, so he wouldn’t question it too much. All he wanted to do was fix the kid and get him out of his clinic.   
  
“You must have pissed someone off,” he said suddenly.  
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
“I mean, double certified trauma and neuro guy, stuck dealing with non-urgent cadet medical cases, hardly using all your skills here are you?”  
  
McCoy grumbled and grabbed the re-gen unit at the end of the bed. Great now he had some sort of stalker. He dialed the unit in to the correct settings. “Don’t pretend to know me kid, we shared a drink on a shuttle. Now, just shut up, and let me do my job.”  
  
“Is this your job?”  
  
He attached the unit to Kirk’s chest. “Do you ever shut up?”  
  
“No, seriously, because if I was you and this was my job, I would quit.”  
  
“Yeah, well, you’re not me.” And just to drill home the point, McCoy jammed a hypospray into Jim’s neck with far more force than necessary.   
  
“OWWW!” He said rubbing his neck. McCoy took a step back and crossed his arms over his chest. Jim wasn’t fooling anyone, but he also wasn’t done talking yet. “Well, if I were you, I would be a whole lot nicer, never know who you have on your table, I mean for all you know, I’m exactly the sort of man you need.”  
  
“That’s great, you need to sit here about 15 minutes, let the unit mend your bones and one of my nurses will be by to check you out. You can stay still, can’t you?”  
  
“Sure thing, doc.”  
  
McCoy would have loved for that to be the end of Jim Kirk in his life. Except the kid was like a damn parasite. He kept coming at him.   
  
More importantly, he kept putting his nose where it shouldn’t.   
  
It was already stressful enough that McCoy was contracted by Intelligence. He really didn’t need the additional stress of trying to keep actual secrets from Jim, who was a goddamned foxhound.   
  
The kid just made him uneasy.  
  
No, the project made him uneasy, the kid just made him anxious. He couldn’t figure out what he wanted. Or even where Jim Kirk fell into the picture, but McCoy was slowly accepting the intrusion into his life. It did make things a little less lonely.   
  
And then the credit dropped.   
  
“Hey, Bones, you hear anything about that new ship they are building – Enterprise?”   
  
McCoy froze and Jim just grinned.  
  
“That’s what I thought.” He fell onto his sofa. Jim was just a bit too close, but he didn’t seem to have any personal boundaries. “Only I also think that your intentions aren’t all that noble and really I’m insulted.”  
  
He looked over at the kid. “What are you going on about?”  
  
“I’m a prime candidate for the program. I score off the charts on all indicators. Seriously, I’m kind of hurt you won’t use me when I could be your golden ticket inside.”  
  
Fuck. McCoy swallowed. He should have known. The kid was a genius. McCoy had not only seen the tests, but oversaw Jim’s retest because he couldn’t believe someone like him was possible.   
  
He could have denied the fact, but it was an interesting possibility. Intelligence wasn’t letting him get close to what they were actually working on. He was just doing all of their theoretical work and passing it on to someone else for the practical applications.  
  
“What makes you think you could withhold an imprint?”  
  
He was walking into dangerous area here. These weren’t things he was allowed to talk about, but if Jim already knew – well, then it would just be irresponsible to not figure out exactly how much he knew about what Starfleet Intelligence was up to. And if he could bring Jim Kirk into the program – they would let him do anything he wanted.  
  
“What makes you think I can’t?”  
  
The conversation had dropped there. That was as far as they would go, but it was only just on pause. Jim brought it up every chance he could.   
  
Jim had his reasons, had his own distrust of Starfleet. For all the good they did, they put a lot of people in harm’s way sometimes to do it. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was how Jim was starting to wear down McCoy’s resolve. Not that it was that strong to begin with. It was an interesting proposition.   
  
“I won’t do it,” he said suddenly over coffee one morning, “it’s too damn risky to put you in that situation.”  
  
Jim smiled again and moved up along side McCoy. “Aww he likes me!”  
  
“Shut up, you idiot.”  
  
“You really like me, which is why you’re going to let me do it.” That was just all sorts of ass backwards argument, but he didn’t have a chance to say any of that, because Jim kept barreling along. “You want to know what Intelligence is really playing at and I’m the way you get in the door. Really this will be a lot easier when you just accept it’s going to be the two of us until the world ends…probably even after that.”  
  
McCoy shook his head. He could only resist for so long.   
  
Jim Kirk was undeniable.  
  
And, really, until the end of the world didn’t sounded like time enough to have Jim at his side.

**Author's Note:**

> The story clearly borrows elements of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. There are some lines from each verse appropriated from that work. You don't need to have seen Dollhouse, although it might help. This story is an expansion of the verse first explored in Films About Ghosts. This story also has little apparent love for Jocelyn, and for that I am sorry.


End file.
